"Soft-spoken" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as if she had presented her case and waited adjudication. She stood by the old negro where he sat in the dust, her hand on his head, not a word more to add to her case, seeming to have passed it on to this slim, confident, soft-spoken stranger with his clear eyes and steady hand, who took hold of ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... didn't know it. I took pains she shouldn't. Matildy come about three o'clock, in the buggy, along with Nellie. Nellie was doin' the drivin', of course, and her mother was tellin' her how, as usual. I don't wonder that girl is such a meek, soft-spoken kind of thing. Between her pa's bullyin' and her ma's tongue, it's a wonder she's got any spirit left. It would be a mercy if George Taylor should marry her and take her out of that house. Matildy had a new book on Spiritu'lism and she was figgerin' to read some of it out loud to Comfort, ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... being instantly detected. Be the explanation what it might, there was something ugly about it, and Smith determined, as he turned to his books, to discourage all further attempts at intimacy on the part of his soft-spoken and ill-favoured neighbour. ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... day was ruled and peopled by the countrymen of Cortes; and the sea that laves the piers of San Francisco is the ocean of the East and of the isles of summer. There goes the Mexican, unmistakable; there the blue-clad Chinaman with his white slippers; there the soft-spoken, brown Kanaka, or perhaps a waif from far-away Malaya. You hear French, German, Italian, Spanish, and English indifferently. You taste the food of all nations in the various restaurants; passing from a French prix-fixe where every one is French, to a roaring German ordinary where every one is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... simple and natural, but somehow she had never thought of men in that light before. They were so free, so untrammelled and self-sufficient; yes, and so barbarous, too. Rufus Hardy, the poet, she had known—quiet, soft-spoken, gentle, with dreamy eyes and a doglike eagerness to please—but, lo! here was another Rufus, still gentle, but with a stern look in his eyes which left her almost afraid—and those two lost years lay between. How he must have changed in all that ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... when there's anything stirring, and be called gran'ther by clumsy creatur's goin' on fifty and sixty, who can't do no more work to-day than I can; an' then the women-folks keeps a-tellin' me to be keerful and not fall, and as how I'm too old to go out fishing; and when they want to be soft-spoken, they say as how they don't see as I fail, and how wonderful I keep my hearin'. I never did want to farm it, but 'she' always took it to heart when I was off on a v'y'ge, and this farm and some consider'ble ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... opponent was no cringing workman scared out of his wits and too timid to defend himself. John Flint knew his own weakness, knew what he could expect at Jan's hands, and it made him cool, collected, wary, and deadly. He was no more the mild-mannered, soft-spoken Butterfly Man, but another and a more primal creature, fighting for his life. Big Jan, indeed, fancied he had nobody but the Butterfly Man to deal with; as a matter of fact he ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... thing he has slain. Muata is not a child. When he sees a single vulture in the sky, he knows there are others coming behind. A white man comes out of the beyond into the black man's country. He is soft-spoken; he is a hunter only. Mawoh! and behind him ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... one kin guess or comperhen'—what des bein' white would mean ter me! Lawd! Lawd!" he says, his voice soft-spoken, but more eager than ever as he went on, and pleading something pitiful to hear, "des think of all de Caucasian blood in me! Gawd knows de nights er my youth I'se laid awake twell de dawn come red ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... hired men, to whom he was telling pleasant tales, and there were women's voices from the kitchen, and the fragrance of frying ham. She dressed in haste, and when she went down the breakfast-table was ready, in great abundance, and everybody waiting by their plates: Eben, aunt Phebe and her mild, soft-spoken husband, and Sarah, the spectacled spinster daughter, who looked benevolently dignified enough ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... self-assertion. Had Lady Bassett required her to see Nick she would probably have refused to do so, and listlessly dismissed the matter from her mind. But there was that in Lady Bassett's manner which roused her antagonism almost instinctively. But vaguely understanding, she yet resented the soft-spoken words. Moreover, a certain perversity, born of her weakness, urged her. What right had Lady Bassett to deny her ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... Chief who, as they say, is born like a tiger cub, with teeth and claws, and may always be expected to do evil. Nevertheless, it would certainly never have occurred to me at that time that this mild-eyed, soft-spoken, silken-mannered, rather melancholy young man was capable of committing a peculiarly cruel, deliberate, and cold-blooded murder. Until one begins to understand them, one's Malay friends always seem to be breaking out in some new and unexpected place, to the intense mortification and surprise of people ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... fule onie day?" said Sam, always more honest than soft-spoken. "He's just as ill as a bit lassie—fair frichtened o' his auld uncle, now he is deid, that ne'er did him a bawbee's worth o' harm while he was alive. My mither says she's vara sure he'll be here the morn, begging ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... of string! I think that you will have some work upon your hands if you are to right all the wrongs that you may see upon this side of the water. It is not to be thought that a troop of bowmen, with the wine buzzing in their ears, will be as soft-spoken as so many young clerks in an orchard. When you have been a year with the Company you will think less of such matters. But what is amiss here? The provost-marshal with his archers is coming this way, and some of you ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... believe that this sunny-tempered, soft-spoken young fellow was the most dreaded of all the officers of the law who hunted down the desperadoes of the border. It was also difficult to believe that Captain McKay was a marked man who had been condemned to death by these same desperate characters. Something of the resourcefulness ...
— The Pony Rider Boys with the Texas Rangers • Frank Gee Patchin
... when I was adopted by Cady. He kept a hotel and saloon. It was down in Los Angeles. Just a small hotel. Workingmen, just common laborers, mostly, and some railroad men, stopped at it, and I guess Al Stanley got his share of their wages. He was so handsome and so quiet and soft-spoken. And he had the nicest eyes and the softest, cleanest hands. I can see them now. He played with me sometimes, in the afternoon, and gave me candy and little presents. He used to sleep most of the day. ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... not just the word, for the ladies did not really expect him to do what he said. They pretended to believe him when he promised, but at the bottom of their hearts they never did or could. He was gentle-mannered and soft-spoken, and when he set his head on one side, and said that a coat would be ready on Wednesday, or a dress on Saturday, and repeated his promise upon the same lady's expressed doubt, she would catch her breath and say that now she absolutely must have it on the day named, for ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... allied laziness. But as the fly in his ointment of jovial irresponsibility was his wife, Lenerengo—the prize shrew of Somo, who was as lean about the middle and all the rest of her as her husband was rotund; who was as remarkably sharp-spoken as he was soft-spoken; who was as ceaselessly energetic as he was unceasingly idle; and who had been born with a taste for the world as sour in her mouth as it was ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... awful smart driver for one that don't foller drivin' the year round," continued Ivory; "and he's the awfullest clean-spoken, soft-spoken feller I ever see." ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a low, mellow, musical voice by my side. I turned to face a tall, dark, wiry man, with the swarthy complexion and intensely black eyes of one having strains of native blood. Among the voyageurs, I had become accustomed to the soft-spoken, melodious speech that betrays Indian parentage; and I believe if I were to encounter a descendant of the red race in China, or among the Latin peoples of Southern Europe, I could recognize Indian blood by that rhythmic trick of the ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... what I mean," he said uneasily. "A lying, circumventing, soft-spoken, polite, stuck-up rascal. Nothing ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad |
