"Stiff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eating a single meal, and if you do not feel inclined to eat, force yourself to do it; for, if you neglect your food, that terrible fiend, Delirium Tremens, will have you in his savage grasp before you know it. Every morning after a spree, take a good stiff horn of brandy, and soon afterwards a glass of plain soda, which will cool you off. Never drink gin—it is vulgar stuff, not fit to be used by gentlemen.—When you desire to reform from drinking, never break off abruptly, which is dangerous; but taper ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... regular Dutch army will compare favourably with any of their neighbours. They are not as stiff on parade as the Germans, and they are more solid than the French. Their physique is good, although, owing to the practice of purchasing a substitute, which has too lately ceased to allow of the change to come into ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... hit by a piece of a French shell," the latter replied. "Fortunately it did not come straight at me, but scraped along my ribs, laying them pretty well bare. As it was a month ago, it is quite healed up; but I am very stiff still, and am obliged to be very careful in my movements. If I forget all about it, and give a turn suddenly, I regularly yell; for it feels as if a red-hot iron had been stuck against me. However, I have learned to be careful and, as long as ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... stop at all, let's sleep a while," said the Very Young Man. "A little rest only gets you stiff. It's a pretty exposed place out here though, isn't it, to sleep?" he added, thinking of the ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... been embalmed in a man's book, simply because an attractive woman once wore something like it when she fed the novelist. Unbalanced by the joy of the situation, he did not accurately observe the garb of the ministering angel, and hence we read of "a clinging white gown" in the days of stiff silks and rampant crinoline; of "the curve of the upper arm" when it took five yards for a pair of sleeves, and of "short walking skirts" during the reign ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... respective turns to occupy the broad warm lap when the time came to remove the last-favoured one from that position. I had an invincible dislike to these dogs with their shiny blue-black naked skins, like the bald head of an old negro, and their long white scattered whiskers. These white stiff hairs on their faces and their dim blinking eyes gave them a certain resemblance to very old ugly men with black blood in them, and made them all the ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... of 'em may be limpin' 'round this same mornin', and feelin' rayther stiff in the legs," Felix took occasion to remark, as they sat at table, and Andy was again in danger of being foundered by the multitude of good things which the farmer's wife spread thereon, bacon and eggs, fried potatoes, scrapple, puffy biscuits, apple sauce, doughnuts, cold ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... sharply, his chest, beneath his shirt of finest holland, swelling, each closely cropped hair upon his head, bared for action, stiff ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... She was terribly stiff, as she found when she limped up the three or four stairs that led up to the door of the living-part of the inn; and she was glad enough to sit down in a wide, low parlour with her friend as Mr. Babington ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... a hand towards one of the black bottles. I was about to thank him and decline, withdrawing my eyes from a black-bonneted female with (unless the shadow of her bonnet played me false) a stiff two-days' beard on her massive chin, when a noise of feet moving over the boards above, and of a scuffle, followed by loud whimpering, reminded ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of boys walking two by two, wearing black dress-suits and high, stiff black hats, and I am glad I ...
— Rafael in Italy - A Geographical Reader • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... of everything, and felt that peculiar and not unpleasant sensation of falling softly, that sometimes supervenes in sleep, ending in a dull shock. After that he had neither dream nor consciousness till he wakened, chill and stiff, stretched between two piles of old rubbish, among the black and roofless ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... them, sir? I seem to see one of the sergeants now. He'd hold that little walking-stick of his with both hands tight and close up under his left arm, stand werry stiff, and drop his head a little on one side as he looked down at them; and then he'd give a sniff, and that ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... time they reached Delmonico's it was half past ten, and they were surprised to see a stream of taxis driving up to the door one after the other and emitting marvelous, hatless young ladies, each one attended by a stiff young ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... and troublesome. At first the ground was good stiff clay that the spades bit out in clean mouthfuls, and that left a fair firm wall behind. But that streak ran out in the second day's working, and the mine burrowed into some horrible soft crumbly soil that had to be held up and back by roof and wall of planking. The Subaltern took a party himself ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... not too large, so that the milk will not flow through, as it is desirable that the child should obtain the milk by suction. So soon as the feeding is over, the nipple should be removed from the bottle, and brushed on both sides with a stiff brush. It should then be put in cold water, where it is kept until ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... to blossom where she walks The careful ways of duty, Our hard, stiff lines of life with her Are flowing ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... become stiff and painful are those of the neck, especially the sterno-mastoid and trapezius. The patient is inclined to attribute the pain and stiffness to exposure to cold or rheumatism. At an early stage the diaphragm and the muscles of the anterior abdominal wall become contracted; later the ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... another house in this street. A family of six lived there. The only furniture I saw in the place was two chairs, a table, a large stool, a cheap clock, and a few pots. The man and his wife were in. She was washing. The man was a stiff built, shock- headed little fellow, with a squint in his eye that seemed to enrich the good-humoured expression of his countenance. Sitting smiling by the window, he looked as if he had lots of fun in him, if he only had a fair chance of letting it off. ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... in it, and was the first that applied it, together with experiment, to natural philosophy. The former rejected, with the most positive disdain, the system of Copernicus: the latter fortified it with new proofs, derived both from reason and the senses. Bacon's style is stiff and rigid: his wit, though often brilliant, is also often unnatural and far-fetched; and he seems to be the original of those pointed similes and long-spun allegories which so much distinguish the English authors: Galilaeo is a lively ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... and a rain-drop, which had been hovering upon a leaf above him, fell with a splash upon the sheet of heavy white paper. He rose to his feet, stiff and chilled and disillusioned. His little ghost-world of fancies had faded away. Morning had come, and eastwards, a single shaft of cold sunlight ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and taking his head in her lap she gently rubbed and stroked his forehead, calling him by the sweetest of names. As the people noted the old woman's ugly apish face, and the repulsive play of its muscles, bending over the young fellow's fine handsome face, his soft features now stiff and pale as in death, when they saw her filthy rags fluttering about over the rich clothing the young man wore, and her lean brownish-yellow arms and long hands trembling upon his forehead and exposed breast—they could not in truth resist shuddering ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Dora, "he will not be pleased." She tried to say something of her pleasure in seeing them, but the words were so stiff and ungracious that Ronald hastened to ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... asked Anse what was the matter with the bank, he said: "For the birds; I'd as soon count sheets of toilet paper as this stuff we're using for money. Sooner. Toilet paper can be used for something, and this paper money's too stiff. Maybe some of this stuff we're digging here isn't worth much, but at least ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... Tolliver complained that Bill's habits were getting bad: and he was the last person in the world to censure excess in the vices which he deemed gentlemanly. His own idea of morning, for instance, was that period of the day when the bad taste in the mouth so natural to a gentleman is removed by a stiff toddy, drunk just before prayers. He would, no doubt, have conceded to the inventor of the alphabet a higher place among men than that of the discoverer of the mint julep, had the matter been presented to him in concrete form; but would have qualified the admission ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... practicable to transfer the seat of the Macedonian military monarchy to Babylon than to found a soldier-dynasty in Tarentum or Syracuse. The democracy of the Greek republics—perpetual agony though it was—could not be at all coerced into the stiff forms of a military state; Philip had good reason for not incorporating the Greek republics with his empire. In the east no national resistance was to be expected; ruling and subject races had long lived ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... stood on tiptoe and the old man bent over sideways, much as a heavily laden Dutch galliot heels to a stiff breeze. ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... tightly sealed. The sunlight hurting Aunt Morin's eyes, the outside shutters were half closed. The room felt like a stuffy, overheated, overcrowded sepulchre. An enormous oak press, part of her Breton dowry, took up most of the side of one wall. This, and a great handsome chest, a couple of tables, a stiff arm-chair, were all too big for the moderately sized apartment. Coloured prints of sacred subjects, tilted at violent angles, seemed eager to occupy as much air-space as possible. And in the middle ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... man has got a story that with age was stiff and stark when old Father Noah told it to the people in the ark, then he comes, a-bubbling over, to the Weekly Bugle's lair, for he wants to share his ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... It demands no elaborate expression. Simplicity is its only coinage. A rhapsody on the exquisiteness of the fruit's flavour would have bored Evadne stiff. Her soul yearned for the establishment between us of a link of appreciation. "Yum, yum," said I, and the link ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... morning, after the effects of the dose of morphia administered by the surgeon who had dressed his hand had worn off, in a state of complete bewilderment. What had happened to him? Why was he lying in this strange, stiff ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the "Collier's dochter," Burns bids Thomson add the following old Bacchanal: it is slightly altered from a rather stiff original.] ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... from head to foot, and from the gaiters on his ankles to the light blonde whiskers on his face. Although he was quite young, yet no one had ever seen him smile, or heard him make a joke. He was so very stiff that M. Daubigeon suggested he had been impaled alive on the ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... the knob and was going right out. But he stopped her and they went into the parlor together while Mrs. Daniels stood staring after them like one mad, her hand held out with his bag and umbrella in it, stiff as a statter in the Central Park. She did'nt stand so long, though, but came running down the hall, as if she was bewitched. I was dreadful flustered, for though I was hid behind the wall that juts out there by the back stairs, I was afraid she would see me and shame ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... hang round an' listen. I had to sign articles with Natchez—had to let them have their umpire. So we're up against it. But we'll hit this pitcher Muckle Harris. He ain't got any steam. An' he ain't got much nerve. Now every feller who goes up to bat wants to talk to Muck. Call him a big swelled stiff. Tell him he can't break a pane of glass—tell him he can't put one over the pan—tell him it he does you'll slam it down in the sand bank. Bluff the whole team. Keep scrappy all the time. See! That's my game today. This Natchez bunch needs to be gone ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... When Donald next awoke, stiff and aching in every joint, the rising sun warned him that he must lose no time in placing a greater distance between himself and those who would soon be on his trail, if, indeed, the pursuit were not already begun. So he set off at ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... night before. Cover the stone jar with a plate and put the jar in a large kettle of water and keep this water at a temperature of one hundred and eight degrees until the sponge rises. It should rise at least an inch and a half. When it has raised mix to a stiff dough, make into loaves and put into pans. Do not let the heat get out of the dough while working. Grease the loaves well on top and set your bread where it will be warm and rise. After the loaves rise bake in a medium oven for one hour and ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... if I hadn't been told that you would be here, I shouldn't have come to this party. Can't stand these gatherings of nuts in May as a general rule. They bore me stiff." ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... second line in front of Loos, "X" and "Y" Brigades separated, "Y" surrounding the village with two battalions, while the rest captured the village and cleaned it up. It was stiff street fighting, the Germans being hidden away in all sorts of corners with plenty of machine guns. The Scots made a quick job of it, not stopping for trifles. It is related that a sergeant, to whom two Germans had surrendered, pulled a few ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... were immediately removed; and that instant, with the curtest thanks, Sub-Inspector Kilbride sprang forward with such vigorous intent that the other detained him forcibly by one of his stiff ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... be made with a stiff, locked wrist. There is no wrist movement in a true drive. Top spin is imparted by the arm, not ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... (Fig. 16), and Horse-Chestnuts the arrangement is altogether different. The shoots are stiff and upright with leaves placed at right angles to the branches instead of being parallel to them. The leaves are in pairs and decussate with one another; while the lower ones have long petioles which bring them almost to the level ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... the watch on deck, when Captain Nelson, of the Albemarle, came in his barge alongside, who appeared to be the merest boy of a captain I ever beheld; and his dress was worthy of attention. He had on a full-laced uniform; his lank unpowdered hair was tied in a stiff Hessian tail, of an extraordinary length; the old-fashioned flaps of his waistcoat added to the general quaintness of his figure, and produced an appearance which particularly attracted my notice; for I had never seen anything ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... their bosoms and find his perch on "the big ha' bible," if he would,—and as he did. So did the music of Emerson's words and life steal into the hearts of our stern New England theologians, and soften them to a temper which would have seemed treasonable weakness to their stiff-kneed forefathers. When a man lives a life commended by all the Christian virtues, enlightened persons are not so apt to cavil at his particular beliefs or unbeliefs as in former generations. We do, however, wish to know what are the convictions of any ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... the doors were flung open, and a magnificent Princess swept into the room. Never was such a beauty seen before. Her golden hair fell almost to the floor and was bound about with jewels. Her robes were stiff with embroidery and gems. The other Princesses paled before her as stars ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... religion which tend to make the firmest and most effectual character are sure to prevail, all else being the same; and creeds or systems that conduce to a soft limp mind tend to perish, except some hard extrinsic force keep them alive. Thus Epicureanism never prospered at Rome, but Stoicism did; the stiff, serious character of the great prevailing nation was attracted by what seemed a confirming creed, and deterred by what looked like a relaxing creed. The inspiriting doctrines fell upon the ardent character, and so confirmed its energy. Strong beliefs win strong men, ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... off first. As to F. A. S., I believe I am no sound authority; I alternate between a stiff disregard and a kind of horror. In neither mood can a man judge at all. I know the thing to be terribly perilous, I fear it to be now altogether hopeless. Luck has failed; the weather has not been favourable; and in her true heart, the mother hopes no more. But - well, I feel ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their leaving day came Sister Helen Vincula put a clean stiff-starched blue-checked apron on Bessie Bell, and they walked together to the Mall where ...
— Somebody's Little Girl • Martha Young
... mules. We raised our own flax an' cotton an' wool, spun the thread, wove the cloth, made all the clothes. Yes'm, we made the mens' shirts an' pants an' coats. One woman knitted all the stockin's for the white folks an' colored folks too. I mind she had one finger all twisted an' stiff from holdin' her knittin' needles. We wove the cotton an' linen for sheets an' pillow-slips an' table covers. We wove the wool blankets too. I use to wait on the girl who did the weavin' when she took the cloth off the loom she done give me the 'thrums' (ends of thread left on the loom.) I tied ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... evidence of the senses as by the primitive simplicity of its elements and the eternal pathos of the human tragedy that it sought to symbolise. He loved to kneel down on the cold marble pavement, and watch the priest, in his stiff flowered vestment, slowly and with white hands moving aside the veil of the tabernacle, or raising aloft the jewelled lantern-shaped monstrance with that pallid wafer that at times, one would fain think, ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... word HURON was used in France as early as 1358 to describe the uncouth peasants who revolted against the nobility. But according to Father Charles Lalemant, a French sailor, on first beholding some Hurons at Tadoussac in 1600, was astonished at their fantastic way of dressing their hair—in stiff ridges with shaved furrows between—and exclaimed 'Quelles hures!'—what boar-heads! In their own language they were known as Ouendats (dwellers on a peninsula), a name still extant in the corrupted form Wyandots.] towns were encircled by log palisades. ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... our ancestors, something very splendid. As painting rose in fame, tapestry sunk in estimation. The introduction of a lighter and less massive mode of architecture abridged the space for its accommodation, and by degrees the stiff and fanciful creations of the loom vanished from our walls. The art is now neglected. I am sorry for this, because I cannot think meanly of an art which engaged the heads and hands of the ladies of England, and gave to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... replied his companion. "We might make it shorter by poling up the last rapid; but it's stiff work, Mr. Charles, and we'll do the thing quicker ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... plain which browse, Or from his cavern the rough boar uprouse; We scare the bokoin to the highest steeps, Hunt down the hare, along the plain which leaps. But though we slaughter, nor the work resign When stiff and wearied are each hand and spine, On field and mountain still the beasts are spied Plenteous as grasses in the summer tide; As at three points the fierce attack I ply, Seeing what numbers still remain to die, Captains, pick'd captains I with speed despatch, Who by the tail the spotted ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... was plain enough. And what shall be said of her, as he sat down, and, resting the wounded leg—stiff and sore yet,—held Sallie on his other knee,—then fell to admiring her while she stroked his mustache and his crisp, curling hair, looking at both and at him altogether with an expression of contented ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... grew more resentful on the strength of it. Jane pleaded, but Brodrick was inexorable. The more she pleaded the more inexorable he was. This time he put his foot down, and put it (as Jane bitterly remarked) on poor Owen Prothero's neck. It was a neck, a stiff and obstinate neck, that positively invited the foot of a stiff and ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... But just as his interlocutor was about to repeat his question, he drew himself up into a rather stiff and formal attitude ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... there was not strife enough between mine uncle and the people of Woodstock already, but I must needs increase it, by chafing this irritable and quick-tempered old man, eager as I knew him to be in his ideas of church-government, and stiff in his prejudices respecting all who dissent from him! The mob of Woodstock will rise; for though he would not get a score of them to stand by him in any honest or intelligible purpose, yet let him cry havoc ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... the preparations for the coronation, the performances, and the subsequent claims arising out of the performances of the day: but it is as stiff and stately throughout as in the dedication. Omitting no one Christian name of a dowager peeress, nor of any "individual person who went in the grand proceeding," nor even of "such who ought to have gone," it furnishes not ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... wont, my finger, and holds it: But the grasp is the clasp of Death, heartbreaking and stiff; Yet feels to my hand as if 'Twas still thy will, thy pleasure and ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... flourish at the Cape of Good Hope; while the Banksias, and a set of genera distinct from those of Africa, grow most luxuriantly in the southern and temperate parts of Australia. They were probably inhabitants, says Heer, of dry hilly ground, and the stiff leathery character of their leaves must have been favourable to their preservation, allowing them to float on a river for great distances without being injured, and then to sink, when water-logged, to the bottom. ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... said the major-general, through stiff lips. "That's what it's for. To break down the morale behind the lines. Good God! What hellish things mere ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... Allah, and are not much better than donkeys in their understandings." The slaves assembled to the number of some fifty in the Souk. Here they performed a species of walking dance, in two right lines, very slow and very stiff and measured, having attached to it some mysterious meaning. They were gaily dressed, attended with a drum and iron castanets, making melodious noises. Each had a matchlock slung at his back. The women carried a chafing-dish of incense, as if about to raise ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... ready, and the morning to weigh anchor came. A stiff breeze blowing up the harbour caused a delay in sailing. The morning was so wet, and the wind blew so hard, that Paul Guidon did not venture out in his canoe, but he came down by land, and quite early in the day stood upon the shore opposite where ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... occurred in his father's office, after hours, one June night. The Thankful was booked to sail, the next morning at eight. When, at eight-ten, it slipped down the harbor, it bore away as cabin-boy and general drudge the stiff and sore, but unrepentant sinner, ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... know my brother-in-law, Mr. Newton Winch," the pretty girl had immediately said; she moved her head and shoulders together, as by a common spring, the effect of a stiff neck or of something loosened in her back hair; but becoming, queerly enough, all the prettier for doing so. He had seen in the papers, her brother-in-law, Mr. Monteith's arrival—Mr. Mark P. Monteith, wasn't it?—and where he was, and she had been ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... this might be done through Stepan Trofimovitch, they had once been friends. And now I suddenly met him at the cross-roads. I knew him at once. He had been pointed out to me two or three days before when he drove past with the governor's wife. He was a short, stiff-looking old man, though not over fifty-five, with a rather red little face, with thick grey locks of hair clustering under his chimney-pot hat, and curling round his clean little pink ears. His clean ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... as inordinately as they loathe him, and, personally, the writer suffered such tortures that her ankles became hot and swollen, and at last, in spite of lavender oil, ammonia and camphor baths, grew so stiff that walking became positively painful, and her ears and eyes mere distorted lumps of inflamed flesh! Therefore, dear lady reader, be prepared when you visit Midgeland to become absolutely hideous and unrecognisable. ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... mounted to the second, where the rioters, being more closely penned, showed fight. Pistol-shots rang out, and some of the police officers had narrow escapes. One powerful bully fought like a tiger, till two policemen fell upon him with their clubs, and soon left him stark and stiff. At last they drove the whole crowd into a rear building, and kept them there till they ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... feeling that a bit of explanation was entirely proper and would probably help in restoring the composure of Carolyn June and the widow. "Parker just brought it out yesterday and it was a good deal of trouble to make the collar work right. It seemed like it was pretty stiff or something. Generally speaking the whole outfit's bigger than it really ought to be, but maybe it'll shrink up some when it's washed," he finished ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... tear as they like, mean deliverance from endless dressings—dressings for breakfast and dressings for lunch, dressings to go out with mamma and dressings to come down to dessert—an escape from fashionable little shoes and tight little hats and stiff little flounces that it is treason to rumple. There is an inexpressible triumph in their return at eventide from the congress by the sea, dishevelled, bedraggled, but with no fear of a scolding from nurse. Then too there is the freedom from "lessons." There ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... laid upon him. And it appeared that God had laid his command upon many to go among the unregenerate bearing testimony, and with sharp-tongued reproach and reviling to prick as with thorns the seared conscience of a perverse and stiff-necked generation. Persecution they welcomed as the martyr's portion, the sure evidence of well-doing. "Where they are most of all suffered to declare themselves, there they least of all desire to come." And so, impelled by the force of the divine ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... diplomatic immunity. Here the ideologies could rant and rave against each other, seeking a rendering of a final decision in men's age-old arguments; but elsewhere such discussions were verboten, and subject to swift, stiff penalties. ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... the wash," said a stiff and stifled voice. "I'm sorry I couldn't get here at six. I ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... was sufficiently unexpected to shock him; she might have been anything rather than a king's favorite; she looked far more like a prim little housewife as she helped Lorelei with her homely tasks, and the incongruity affected Pope painfully. With involuntary suspicion he avoided her after his first stiff greeting; but his eyes followed her furtively, and he wandered slightly in his attention to ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... acquiescence was stiff, and a little abrupt. He would have changed the subject, but Littleson ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... travelled without books, either in peace or war"; and as I found them pleasant in happier days, so I find them pleasant now. Of course, much of this omnivorous reading is from habit, and, invita Minerva, cannot be dignified by the name of study,—that stiff, steady, persistent, uncompromising application of the mind, by virtue of which alone the Pons Asinorum can be crossed, and the Forty-Seventh Problem ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... Stephen nodded to her. "There ain't a doubt as t' what the doctors 'd bring him in I ain't speaking my ideas alone. It's written like the capital letters in a newspaper. Lunatic's the word! And I'll take a glass of something warm, Mrs. Boulby. We had a stiff run to-day." ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and I should probably have slept on until darkness had once more returned, had it not been for a wandering sun-ray which had found its way through the branches overhead, and, shining directly in my face, had awakened me. I awoke stiff, ravenously hungry, and parched with thirst. I had had the forethought to provide against an inopportune attack of the former feeling, by putting a biscuit or two in my pocket; but in the excitement of coming away I had omitted—as I now found to my chagrin—to bring my flask with me. I accordingly ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... sort of inclination of the head as slight and stiff as could be imagined. Yet it encouraged our man of law to proceed. "I can promise You, Mr. Hazlewood, few people have taken the interest in that matter which I have done, both for the sake of the country, and on account of my particular respect ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... upon the testimony of her cheval glass, she preferred satin to the richest of silks, and almost always wore it. Now and then she would attempt a change, but was always defeated and driven back into satin. She was precise in her personal rules, but not stiff in the manners wherein she embodied them: these were indeed just a little florid and wavy, a trifle profuse in their grace. She kept an excellent table, and every appointment about the house was in good style—a favourite phrase with her. She was her own housekeeper, an exact ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... alterations answer." In another he says: "I have done a Cicero without any plaits—the different segments meeting exactly. The fitting the drills into the spindle by a taper of 1 in 6 will do. They are perfectly stiff and will not unscrew easily. Four guide-pullies answer, but there must be a pair for the other end, and to work with a single hand, for the returning part is always cut upon some part or other ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... the open fire-boxes. But they seemed very tiny trains indeed, and stirred in him no recollections of the semi-annual visits to London town when he went to the dentist, and lunched with the dreaded grandmother or the stiff and ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... had they not known who it was, they would scarcely have recognised me. Dressed in another man's clothes, exceedingly thin, with eyes fearfully bloodshot, and fingers stiff and shrunken, the middle finger more resembling a dead stick, they say, with the gray and wrinkled bark on, than the living member of a human body, this is scarcely to be wondered at. I was glad to go to bed at once, and to have my feet and ...
— A Night in the Snow - or, A Struggle for Life • Rev. E. Donald Carr
... Catherine's side; but she instantly resumed the bold and firm accent which was more familiar to her. "I did not bid you," she said, "come and sit so close by me; for the acquaintance that I spoke of, has been stiff and cold, dead and buried, for ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... morning, it seemed almost as fair as the smooth and lovely canals which Stedman traversed to meet his negro soldiers in Surinam. The air was cool as at home, yet the foliage seemed green, glimpses of stiff tropical vegetation appeared along the banks, with great clumps of shrubs whose pale seed-vessels looked like tardy blossoms. Then we saw on a picturesque point an old plantation, with stately magnolia avenue, decaying house, and tiny church amid the woods, reminding ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... retired with the young ladies to their secret conclave in the drawing-room, she said, 'I like Captain Armine very much; he is so full of spirit and imagination. When we met him this morning, do you know, I thought him rather stiff and fine. I regretted the bright boyish flow that I so well recollected, but I ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... should be strong and that there should be plenty of line. The native spoon can be obtained on the spot. Some fishermen prefer a large rod as better able to hold off a fish which runs under the boat; I should personally prefer a short, stiff, steel-centred rod such as Hardy's 12ft. Murdoch—a type of rod preferred by the Americans for yellow tail and tuna fishing. This kind of rod is much handier in ...
— Fishing in British Columbia - With a Chapter on Tuna Fishing at Santa Catalina • Thomas Wilson Lambert
... three o'clock on the Tuesday of Easter week, on a beautiful, bright day, that the angel ceased to suffer. Her heroic grandmother wished to watch all that night with the priests, and to sew with her stiff old fingers her darling's shroud. Towards evening Brigaut left the Auffray's ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... of tears over the inexpressibly affecting letter thus begun. One would think I might have become familiar enough with images of death and destruction; yet somehow the image of Pickie's little dancing figure, lying, stiff and stark, between his parents, has made me weep more than all else. There was little hope he could do justice to himself, or lead a happy life in so perplexed a world; but never was a character of ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... that he had had enough of it, as he looked along the deck and saw numbers of the men who had been slightly hurt binding up each other's wounds. Several lay stiff and stark, whose bodies were dragged on one side, while not a few, severely hurt, had been carried below to the cockpit, where the surgeon and his mates had ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... birth, rank, and knowledge of the world. A natural and unnatural manner seemed struggling in all her gestures, and in every syllable that she articulated—a naturally free, familiar, good-natured, precipitate, Irish manner, had been schooled, and schooled late in life, into a sober, cold, still, stiff deportment, which she mistook for English. A strong Hibernian accent she had, with infinite difficulty, changed into an English tone. Mistaking reverse of wrong for right, she caricatured the English pronunciation; ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... straight up like a sentinel at its post, staring into dust clouds through which rode an approaching enemy. Eyes watched, ears listened, brain was hideously alert. The whole body kept itself tense, stiff, wary. For Valentine had a secret conviction at this moment that he was about to be attacked. By what? He was hardly master of himself enough to wonder. His thoughts no longer ran free. They crept like paralyzed things about his mind, and that despite the unnatural vitality of his brain. It ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... sleep. One night he did not come to fetch her at all, I had wrapped a blanket round the child where she lay on my bed, and had sat down to watch by her and presently I too fell asleep. I do not know how long I slept but when I woke there was a gray light in the room, I was very cold and stiff, but I could hear close by, the soft, regular breathing of the child. There was a great uneasiness on me, and after a while I stole out across the passage and knocked at the Count's door, there was no answer but it gave when I tried it, and so I went in. The lamp had smouldered out, there ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... the door, ejaculating, "Bad night on my rheumatiz;" and continuing, as he descended the well-worn stairs, "de boss just give me a little of de w'iskey bitters-w'iskey bitters mighty good for de rheumatiz. Maybe when dey warm me up good, I won't feel so stiff, and de cold won't pinch so dreadful. Umph! umph! umph! ward number two comes fust," and clutching the bundle of papers more tightly, and gathering again the folds of the well-worn gray blanket around him, the old carrier struck out, as briskly as the cold and his stiffened ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... may be, it was certainly she whom I saw in my dream with Neith. Neith was sitting weaving, and I thought she looked sad, and threw her shuttle slowly; and St. Barbara was standing at her side, in a stiff little gown, all ins and outs, and angles; but so bright with embroidery that it dazzled me whenever she moved; the train of it was just like a heap of broken jewels, it was so stiff, and full of corners, and so many-colored ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... private sector, yet the state still plays a major role in basic industry, banking, transport, and communication. The largest industrial sector is textiles and clothing, which accounts for one-third of industrial employment; it faces stiff competition in international markets with the end of the global quota system. However, other sectors, notably the automotive and electonics industries, are rising in importance within Turkey's export mix. In recent years ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... looked his delighted concurrence; Mr Delvile forced himself to make a stiff inclination of the head; and Lady Honoria gaily exclaimed, "Dr Lyster, when you say the best and the most faultless, you should always add the rest of the ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... the day for his visit. He comes to see us with no pointed cap: in ordinary garb, in fact, with nothing very queer about him. He bursts into our schoolroom like a hurricane. His red face is half-buried in the enormous stiff collar that digs into his ears. A few wisps of red hair adorn his temples; the top of his head shines like an old ivory ball. In a dictatorial voice and with wooden gestures, he questions two or three of the ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... Palestine, we were one day beating along the eastern shore of the great island of Tombara (New Ireland) or, as it is now called by its German possessors, Neu Mecklenburg, when an accident happened to one of our hands—a smart young A.B. named Rogers. The brig was "going about" in a stiff squall, when the jib-sheet block caught poor Rogers in the side, and ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... wildly at the white soldiers who march past to the sound of the fife. He sees his destiny, and accepts it. The arm he had raised for the charge sinks slowly, his fist falls on his hip; his sword falls into the regulation position, and, stiff as an automaton, with a toneless and mechanical voice, the voice of an Austrian officer, ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... formal; Miss Drane left her work to meet the visitor, but having been loftily set aside by that lady during a stiff conversation with her mother about old residents in the neighborhood in which they had lived, she excused herself, after a time, and went back to ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... the good fortune of starting in life as a graduate," explained Tzu-tsing as he smiled, "and yet are not aware of the saying uttered by some one of old: that a centipede even when dead does not lie stiff. (These families) may, according to your version, not be up to the prosperity of former years, but, compared with the family of an ordinary official, their condition anyhow presents a difference. Of late the number of the inmates ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... and was reduced to the ranks, and young Smith lost no time in challenging him to fight. I hear most of the men thought he was a fool for doing so, for North is five years older than he is, and a stiff-built young fellow too. I hear that it was a very hard fight, and lasted nearly an hour and a half. After the first half-hour it seemed to every one that Smith would have to give in, for the other man had all the best of it, knocking him down every ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... to go on, and faster," said the young man. His hands were clenched; his arms were stiff at his side. "Can you do it?" he asked Betty Dalrymple. She answered; standing in a green recess, she had never appeared more beautiful to him than in that moment of peril. Green and red things flashed behind her—tiny feathered creatures that shone like jewels. The dewdrops ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... mouths waving them to and fro; others bearing vases of many-coloured sherbets, and surrounding a superior domestic, who carries the strong and burning coffee in small cups of porcelain supported in frames of silver fillagree, all placed upon a gorgeous waiter covered with a mantle of white satin, stiff and shining ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... time thoroughly stiff and tired, and knowing, moreover, that Smith would navigate the aeroplane over the sea with much more certainty than himself, he shouted to awaken him. This proving ineffectual, he leant over and nudged his shoulder. Smith ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... fight; but you are a mean, dirty blackguard, or you wouldn't have treated a girl like that," replied Tommy, standing as stiff as a stake before ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... and so alike were we that both said it seemed as if there had been no change made—yes, you remember that. Then you noticed that the soldier had hurt my hand—look! here it is, I cannot yet even write with it, the fingers are so stiff. At this your Highness sprang up, vowing vengeance upon that soldier, and ran towards the door—you passed a table—that thing you call the Seal lay on that table—you snatched it up and looked eagerly about, as if for a place to hide ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the upper corner. The lady of the lavender silks had a complexion that looked as if it had been dipped in a fountain of perennial youth. She was leaning over the evening paper which the undertaker plumes had evidently shown her. The heat had not improved Eleanor's stiff linen collar and the dust had certainly not added to the style of her kakhi motor coat. It was not until afterwards she remembered how both the heads flew apart from the evening paper the moment she ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... columns, they were almost wholly personal, and sometimes ran a hundred pages without alluding at all to the ship on which he wrote. Well! the earliest of these was by far the most elegant in appearance. My eyes watered a little, as Ingham showed me on the first page, in the stiff Italian hand which our grandmothers wrote in, when they aspired ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sympathies were mere weaknesses: we were moving to a synthesis of art where the enchanting perfume of romance should be wedded to the severe beauty of classic form. I really talked as if inspired, and when I paused, Pater—the stiff, quiet, silent Pater—suddenly slipped from his seat and knelt down by me and kissed my hand. ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... make a camp of our own, don't we?" he said. "All my bones are stiff from so much bending and creeping. Moreover, my hunger has grown to such violent pitch that it is tearing at me, so to speak, with ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... dashed upon me; and such was his fear of ridicule—for the girl was laughing him to scorn now—he put up a fair, stiff fight. But I forgot my weariness when he foully clotted me on the head with a stone. I drove at him with all the speed and suddenness my father had taught me, caught the fellow by the ankle, and brought him ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... lively Lady Joanna was in high favour with the princely gallants of the cavalcade. The only member of the party at all equal to her in beauty was the Duchess of York, who travelled in a whirlicote with her younger children and her ladies, and at the halting-places never relaxed the stiff dignity with which she treated every one. Eleanor did indeed accompany her sister, but she had not Jean's quick power of repartee, and she often answered at haphazard, and was not understood when she did reply; ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... poor stiff," said the new ensign, "where are you looking? What's wrong, anyhow? Gee! Isn't it jolly to be back among the ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... instead of suffering it, as she had previously done, to flow loosely over her shoulders, or to display its luxuriant braids like a succession of glossy diadems around her head, she caused it to be closely cut, and arranged in stiff rows ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... time, I found nothing necessary but to repeat the application of the caustic about every third day to subdue inflammation and to keep the wounds open, which it always effected. The joint ever afterwards remained stiff, from which we may infer the violence of the inflammation; and when we consider what was the constitution of my patient, we cannot, I think, doubt that the caustic prevented many serious events usually consequent in such cases under the ...
— An Essay on the Application of the Lunar Caustic in the Cure of Certain Wounds and Ulcers • John Higginbottom
... frozen and stiff. Each looked at the other abruptly, then Kendall moved. From the receiver, he ripped out the recording coil, and instantly jammed it into the analyzer. He started it through once, then again, then again, at different tone settings, till ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... Carrara Came Chanticleer's muffled crow, The stiff rails softened to swan's-down, And ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... coating of embroidery paste, or of tissue paper or fine holland pasted over the part to be applied. The more all this kind of thing can be avoided, the better the work, for pasting of any kind is apt to give a stiff mechanical look; also, if the work is intended to hang in folds any stiffness ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... with the racer and in with the screw, We'll show him what Mulligan's talent can do; And if he gets nasty and dares to say much, I'll knock him as stiff ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... invited to meet us. Some few spoke French, and with these we managed to exchange an occasional remark; but as the greater number stood about in silence, the affair, thus far, was undeniably a little stiff. Just before the dinner was announced, all the Turkish officers went into an adjoining room, and turning their faces to the east, prostrated themselves to the floor in prayer. Then we were all conducted to a large salon, where each being ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan
... cherished the desire of bestowing his daughter on Kiriti (Arjuna), the son of Pandu. But he never spoke of it to anybody. And, O Janamejaya, the king of Panchala thinking of Arjuna caused a very stiff bow to be made that was incapable of being bent by any except Arjuna. Causing some machinery to be erected in the sky, the king set up a mark attached to that machinery. And Drupada said, 'He that will string this bow ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator) |
