"Straightforwardness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... could trust. A more striking instance never came under my notice of what, I believe, is the experience of those who best know the working classes, that the most essential of all recommendations to their favour is that of complete straightforwardness; its presence outweighs in their minds very strong objections, while no amount of other qualities will make amends for its apparent absence. The first working man who spoke after the incident I have ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... my own childish recollections of the interview between them. Indeed there was such an air of simple straightforwardness about his whole communication, while at the same time it accounted so thoroughly for the warning my uncle had given me against him, that I felt I might trust him entirely, and so would have told him all that had taken place at the Hall, but for the share his daughter had borne in it, and ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... the young people of the passenger guards but also the male commonalty of the boiler deck. In a state of society which he, as "a type," reflected they saw themselves; saw their own spiritual image; their unqualified straightforwardness, their transparent simplicity of mind and heart, their fearlessness, their complacent rusticity, their childish notions of the uses of wealth, their personal modesty and communal vanity, their happy oblivion to world standards, ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... evil-speaking, and fraud. But remember this, you have no more powerful auxiliaries than these men themselves; they are their own enemies; fight them with honest weapons, and sooner or later they are condemned. As to the first of them, loyal men and true, your straightforwardness will obtain their respect, and the differences between you once settled (for all things can be settled), these men will serve you. Do not be afraid of making enemies; woe to him who has none in the world you are about to enter; ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... conceit, and she could not realize, since her sympathy was unquickened by a responsive affection, that a love of short growth could mean much to its possessor. This lack of appreciation of love's intensity was increased by the fact that her own simplicity of thought and straightforwardness of character always had prevented her from taking seriously any man's attentions until they ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... should speak well, but it is more necessary that we should speak the truth. We must not only acquire that culture which is the golden key that unlocks all doors and unbars all gates, but we must cultivate that straightforwardness of purpose and unconquerable determination which enables a people to face conditions ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... promising they may be? There may, of course, be a satisfactory explanation, but as the matter stands it is inexplicable, and is all the more regrettable because it is calculated—we feel sure unjustly—to cast doubts on the loyalty and straightforwardness of ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... without difficulty established; and it would be impossible to avoid coming to the conclusion that Somers had violated his trust. Such tactics, however, have very seldom succeeded in English parliaments; for a little good sense and a little straightforwardness are quite sufficient to confound them. A sturdy Whig member, Sir Rowland Gwyn, disconcerted the whole scheme of operations. "Why this reserve?" he said, "Everybody knows your meaning. Everybody sees that you have not the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Clarissa's purity strikes one as having at once too much questionable prudery in it and too little honest prudence: while her later resolution has as much false pride as real principle. Even some of her admirers admit a want of straightforwardness in her; she has no passion, which rather derogates from the merit of her conduct in any case; and though she is abominably ill-treated by almost everybody, one's pity for her never comes very near ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... the straightforwardness of sixteen, "that means a lot to you, doesn't it, that she should write that she is ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... England the above-mentioned fallacy. This is a blunder, which before long or short Seward will repent. It looks like astuteness—ruse; but if so, it is the resource of a rather limited mind. In great and minor affairs, straightforwardness is the best policy. Loyalty always gets the better of astuteness, and the more so when the opponent is unprepared to meet it. Tricks can be well met by tricks, but tricks are impotent against truth and sincerity. But Mr. Seward, unhappily, has spent his life in various political tricks, and ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... Paris streets, or busy with villainies in country places; character was complex by force of circumstances, which, under other conditions, might have been simple and straightforward. With some a certain straightforwardness remained, not always directed to wrong ends. It was so in Lucien Bruslart. It was not easy for him to be a scoundrel, and self was not always master. Even with Pauline Vaison in his arms he thought of Jeanne St. ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... period of his history, Pliny, Solinus, Eutropius, Orosius, Gildas. From the advent of Augustine his work becomes his own; he collects documents, memoranda, testimonies, frequently legends, and publishes the whole without any criticism, but without falsifications. He lacks art, but not straightforwardness. ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... of ladyhood or superiority to her class, but was always equal to the finest society in which she found herself, by dint of that simple good faith, sense, and seriousness, without excitement or exaggeration, and radiant purity and straightforwardness which were apparent to all seeing eyes. By this time all the little world about knew something of her purpose and followed her every step with wonder and quickly rising curiosity: and no doubt the whole town was astir, women gazing at their doors, all on her side ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... the father thereof." A Christian is to be true and just in all his dealings, abhorring crookedness: for the essence of lying is not inexactitude in speech, but deceitfulness of intention. Christian veracity means honesty, straightforwardness, and sincerity in deed as well as in word. A writer of fiction is not a liar: to improve in the telling an anecdote or a story is not necessarily to deceive others in any culpable sense; and moralists have from time to time discussed the question whether there may not be circumstances ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... But that it was the cheapest of all in that week of dinners meant that I came out last in the race when, by every law of justice, I should have been first. In Paris as in London my "greedy column," as my friends called it with the straightforwardness peculiar to friends, had to be written every week for the Pall Mall and mine was the enviable position of finding my copy in eating good dinners no less than in going to the Salons. If any one had an irreproachable excuse for extravagant ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... Dr. Farrar cannot have two different meanings for the same word in the same verse; and should he ever go to hell (he will pardon us the supposition), how much consolation would he derive from knowing that his doom was not "everlasting" but only "eternal"? There was more honesty and straightforwardness in Mr. Spurgeon. He preached what the Bible taught him. He set forth a hateful creed in its true colors. His presentation of Christianity will continue to satisfy those who belong to the past, but it will ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... had explained the reason of his seeking a suburban home, and, drawn on by her gentle sympathy, was telling her the story of his life. Miss Diana had a way of compelling confidence, and the people who gave it to her never afterwards regretted the gift. With the straightforwardness which was a part of his nature he told his story. It never occurred to him that there was anything peculiar about it, yet when he had finished there were ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... had found Jennie to be a lovely, intelligent, and more than ordinarily educated girl. While unused to society, yet there was an honest straightforwardness about her that was very charming. The two ladies became easily intimately acquainted with her. Her whole soul was devoted to her mother, and the hope that Dr. Jones had inspired shone from her eyes. She became quite cheerful and merry. And the effect upon ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... task he was to conduct himself with the frankness and straightforwardness of a sneak-thief. Not a soul in New York was to know where he had gone. Not a soul in Hunston must dimly suspect what he had come for. It must be gum-shoe work from start to finish, and the Cypriani's motto would be the inspiring ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... length did speak his own voice sounded strange to him; but he said what he had to say with a simple straightforwardness which in ordinary ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... language lacks the simple but winning straightforwardness of the words which Director Morris uttered on the same day near Baltimore and which prove how distinctly Western the new railway project ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... dignified in its simplicity, unexceptional in its good taste, listened to by both sides with evident sympathy. During two years' administration of War Office affairs, he has by straightforwardness, urbanity, and display of perfect command of his subject, increased the personal popularity enjoyed whilst he was yet a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... opinion of Mercy,[1] the dauphin was endowed by nature with a more than ordinary share of good qualities. His faults were only such as proceeded from an excessively bad education. He had many most essential virtues. He was a young man of perfect integrity and straightforwardness; he was desirous to hear the truth; and it was never necessary to beat about the bush, or to have recourse to roundabout ways of bringing it before him. On the contrary, to speak to him with perfect frankness ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... had no authority to negotiate a convention and Adams received renewed instructions to proceed, the latter "kept his temper, but the affair made a lasting impression on his mind, and shook his faith in the straightforwardness of the British Government." In renewing his overtures at London, Adams made explanations of the previous "misunderstanding" and to these Russell replied with further "inaccuracies" as to what had been said ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... customary straightforwardness and honesty, had printed the account of the scene in the Council Chambers word for word. There it stood—his own accusation and the counter-charges urged against him. He had attempted neither palliation nor excuse. But in the same issue of "The Mercury" he had reproduced the account ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... athletic; he had a large head, surmounted with dark brown hair, slightly touched with gray; a finely cut, somewhat rugged and bronzed face, suggestive of that out-of-door life in which he had always found his greatest pleasure; light blue eyes that shone with straightforwardness and that on this occasion were somewhat pensive with anxiety; thin, ascetic lips that could smile in the most confidential manner or close tightly with grimness and fixed purpose. He was a man who was at the same time ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... pleased with the very obvious homage of a charming young woman. For Helena's homage was very obvious indeed. Accustomed always to do what she pleased, and say what she pleased, Helena, at three-and-twenty, had a frankness of manner, a straightforwardness of speech, which her friends called original and her detractors called audacious. She would argue, unabashed, with the great leader of the party on some high point of foreign policy; she would talk to the great chieftain of Opposition as if he were her ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... Susan, eager to love and to be loved, and easily confusing the not easily distinguished spiritual and physical, was reassured. Once in a while a look or a phrase from him gave her vague uneasiness; but on the whole she felt that, in addition to clear conscience from straightforwardness, she had a further reason for being glad Chance had forced upon her the alternative of telling him or lying. She did not inquire into the realities beneath the surface of their life—neither into what he thought of her, nor into what she thought of him—thought ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... shoulders, and his feet and hands small. His appearance is decidedly commanding and aristocratic: he is certainly handsome even according to our notions. He has a fine open brow, significant at once of brains and straightforwardness, a straight proportionate nose, and a good mouth. The slight tendency to Polynesian overfulness about his lips is concealed by a well-shaped moustache. He wears whiskers cut in the English fashion. His ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... lack of straightforwardness which vitiated the dealings of the Conference with the public turned upon the Bullitt mission to Russia. Mr. Wilson, who in the depths of his heart seems to have cherished a vague fondness for the Bolshevists ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... seem to be compressed, as if some species of finesse were at work—an attenuated worldly precaution which leads him perpetually to half conceal sentiment, purpose and acts, as if the operations and business of life were not ten times better effected by plain straightforwardness than by any other mode. He has, however, so long dealt with tricky fur-traders and dealers in interested sentiment, that it seems his intellectual habits are formed, to some extent, on that model. What annoys me ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... conciliated for him the esteem and regard of men of all parties, and he has endeared himself to his friends by the warmth and steadiness of his attachments, and from the implicit confidence they all have in his truth, straightforwardness, and sincerity. He delights in the society of men of the world and in a life of gaiety and pleasure. He is very easily amused, and particularly with jokes full of coarseness and indelicacy; the men ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... fervent Christian. But that type, all experience shows, has a pit dug close beside it into which it is apt to fall. For there is a strange connection between emotional Christianity and a want of straightforwardness in daily business life, and of self-control and government of the appetites and the senses. That has been sadly shown, over and again, and if we had time one could easily point to the reasons in human nature, and its strange ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... being added to the commission. Adams was a sturdy New Englander of British stock and of a distinctly English type—medium height, a stout figure, and a ruddy face. No one questioned his honesty, his straightforwardness, or his lack of tact. Being a man of strong mind, of wide reading and even great learning, and having serene confidence in the purity of his motives as well as in the soundness of his judgment, Adams was little inclined to surrender his own views, and was ready ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... into an offensive and defensive league with England against the projects of France. Temple, accompanied by his sister, instantly set out for the Hague, and laid the propositions of the English Government before the Grand Pensionary. The Dutch statesman answered with characteristic straightforwardness, that he was fully ready to agree to a defensive confederacy, but that it was the fundamental principle of the foreign policy of the States to make no offensive alliance under any circumstances whatever. With this ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... measure, however well advised. He ventured, from a thorough acquaintance with circumstances and accurate knowledge of the character of his countrymen, to pledge himself to the king for their inviolable loyalty, as soon as they should be convinced of the honesty of his intentions by the straightforwardness of his proceedings; while, on the contrary, he assured him that there would be no hopes of it as long as they were not relieved of the fear of being made the victims of the oppression, and sacrificed to the envy of the Spanish nobles. At last Montigny's coadjutor made his ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... age, emerged from the pantry, where it appeared he had been helping the steward, and stood before us, alert and evidently prepared to answer questions. He was only a little chap, fair-haired and blue-eyed, and his eyelids were red, as though he had recently been crying; but there were honesty, straightforwardness, and fearlessness in the way in which he looked me straight in the eye, and an evident eagerness in his manner that ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... with perfect straightforwardness, omitting nothing, adding nothing, he gave her the narrative of that fatal night's events, from the first moment he had laid eyes on the wonderfully-disguised woman, till her cudgel-blow had laid ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... sandy hair, reddish beard, and tanned skin. His mouth was like a badly made buttonhole, which gaped a little when he smiled. He had a nose like a parrot's beak, and his eyes were blue, kindly, and wise in their straightforwardness. When he would render his costume absolutely de rigueur, he wore a leathern jacket with manifold pockets, from one to another of which trailed a gold watch-chain with a dangling ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... to bring art as an adjunct in impressing the young mind were of the order already familiar in the New England Primer, ingenuous in their simple straightforwardness and of uncompromising faithfulness to nature. The fable of the Boy that stole Apples, which I have never been able to trace back of Webster, but through him has become a part of our mental furniture, is briskly set forth at one of its points in a queer wood-cut. The old man in his continental ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... courtly; but whether law-abiding is another matter. We know nothing about their laws, but we know {37} that the law-courts were busy, and that legal officials were numerous; and we know, further, that their duplicity and lack of straightforwardness were proverbial among the Greeks and Romans, ...
— The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep and the Instruction of Ke'Gemni - The Oldest Books in the World • Battiscombe G. Gunn
... no, Miss Brooke, I never said anything of the kind," declared Oliver, somewhat alarmed by her straightforwardness. "I was only thinking of the general actions of man, not ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... trodden tracks in order to avoid injury to insects (irya), gentle and holy talk (bha@sa), receiving proper alms (e@sa@na), etc, (3) guptis or restraints of body, speech and mind, (4) dharmas consisting of habits of forgiveness, humility, straightforwardness, truth, cleanliness, restraint, penance, abandonment indifference to any kind of gain or loss, and supreme sex-control [Footnote ref 1], (5) anuprek@sa consisting of meditation about the transient character of the world, about our helplessness without the ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... at her, rather wryly, at her straight courageous figure, her brave eyes, meeting his so directly. How like her it all was, the straightforwardness of it, the absence of coquetry. And once again he knew, not only that he loved her with all the depths of him, of his strong body and his vigorous mind, but that she was his woman. The one woman in the world for him. It was as though ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Master, "we have these results: for deferential demeanor, a worried one; for calm attentiveness, awkward bashfulness; for manly conduct, disorderliness; for straightforwardness, perversity. ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... wit and a fluent tongue are valuable auxiliaries. But force of character, consciousness of power, masculine ability in grappling with complicated questions, and that species of eloquence, the effect of which arises rather from earnestness, straightforwardness, and elevation of sentiment, than from sparkling or elaborate rhetoric, give a man a position in the House of Commons which leaves him little in need of such other gifts as we ...
— M. P.'s in Session - From Mr. Punch's Parliamentary Portrait Gallery • Harry Furniss
... and straightforwardness were proverbial. He was always in charge of the funds of every order he belonged to, as well as ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... dined with Minister Newel, and had a very interesting talk with Van Karnebeek, who had already favorably impressed me by his clear-headedness and straightforwardness; also with Messrs. Asser, member of the Dutch Council of State, and Rahusen, member of the Upper Chamber of the States General, both ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... Sir Philip set foot on the yacht, his hands were cordially grasped, and his friends out-vied each other in good wishes for his happiness. He thanked them simply and with a manly straightforwardness, entirely free from the usual affected embarrassment that some modern young men think it seemly ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... shown a want of tact in his conduct to Kester. Acute with passionate keenness in one direction, he had a sort of dull straightforwardness in all others. For instance, he had returned Kester the money which the latter had so gladly advanced towards the expenses incurred in defending Daniel. Now the money which Philip gave him back was part of an advance which Foster Brothers had made on Philip's own account. ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... he was very glad to have this evidence of our earnestness and straightforwardness and he thought the Filipinos and Americans should act towards one another as friends and allies, and therefore it was right and proper that all doubts should be expressed frankly in order that explanations be made, ...
— True Version of the Philippine Revolution • Don Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy
... a moment as though she would read him through and through; as though, in spite of all their candour, there was some lingering uncertainty as to his perfect straightforwardness; then, as if satisfied, she said at last: "Yes, but with a difference. I have no doubt which memory it will be. You will not wish to be again ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Gulf City. Now, I'd like to settle this thing in a friendly manner, Langdon. I like always for every member of the Senate to have his share of the power and the patronage. We've been glad to put you forward in this naval base matter. We appreciate the straightforwardness, the honesty of your character. You look well. You're the kind of politician the public thinks it wants nowadays, but you've been in the Senate long enough to know that bills have to pass, and you know you can't get through ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... the professed ground that it is more exact than "Atheism," but on the real ground that it is less unpopular, waiting meanwhile for the time when it shall have become more exact than it is by becoming accepted in the same sense as the Atheism that has previously been rejected. Courage and straightforwardness saves ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... afternoon it became necessary to tell her. She had begun to love her son's wife in spite of her family history. Had Elizabeth known how to manage it she could have made of John's mother a comfortable ally, but Elizabeth, with characteristic straightforwardness, sought no alliance except the natural one with her husband. The two women planned the articles to be served in the dinner, and then turned to the discussion of other preparations about the house. Elizabeth was proud of ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... might presume on her master's example, and on her master's evident liking for her, the old man instantly discovered the advance she was making from her proper position, and instantly put her back in it again, with a quaint good humor which inflicted no pain, but with a blunt straightforwardness of purpose which permitted no escape. Contradictory as it may sound, Admiral Bartram was too familiar to be approached; he kept the distance between himself and his servant more effectually than if he had been the proudest ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... perhaps primarily, in the simplicity, straightforwardness, and general human interest of his appeal. He wants no commentaries, no introductions, no keys, no dismal Transactions of Dumas Societies and the like. Every one that thirsteth may come to his fountain and drink, without mysteries of initiation, or ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... story clearly and intelligibly, replying also to such questions as Richard Dewey was impelled to ask him, and his straightforwardness produced a very favorable ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... followed by a curious hush; but if for an instant an idea was poised in the air of the court room, it did not descend, it was banished as preposterous. The moment's silence was broken by Lewis Rand. From his place at the side of the room he spoke with a grave simplicity and straightforwardness, characteristic and impressive, familiar to most there who had heard him before now, in this court room, on questions of life and death. "Everything is to be pardoned to Mr. Fairfax Cary's most natural grief. My testimony, sir, is as I ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... brought into a court of justice," and described us as "two enthusiasts who have been actuated by a desire to do good in a particular department of society." He then went on to a splendid statement of the law of population, and ended by praising our straightforwardness and asserting Knowlton's honesty of intention. Every one in court thought that we had won our case, but they had not taken into account the religious and political hatred against us and the presence on the jury ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... artist's eye resting upon a type which attracts it, and the satisfaction of a blase mind which is amused by anything new, however simple it may seem to be. She liked that reserve, most alluring in a Southerner, the straightforwardness of that judgment, entirely free from artistic or worldly formulas and enlivened by a touch of local accent. It was a change for her from the zigzag movement of the thumb, drawing flattery in outline with the gestures of a studio ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... he had conceived in his youth. He was a man of strong individuality, and invariably maintained the dignity of his art with unflinching independence. Even the mistakes that he made, as for instance his criticism of Beethoven, bore the strongest testimony to his manly straightforwardness and sincerity in word and deed. He was a most prolific composer, leaving over two hundred works in all. His violin concertos stand foremost among his works, and are distinguished as much by noble and elevated ideas as ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... the end of his life. For his leery cunning is so intensely stupid that, in fact, he is as "green" as grass; his leer and his foul mouth keep him in the gutter to his very last day. How much more successful plain, simple straightforwardness would be! The pony went on a little, but they drew rein, and waited for the girl again; and again he "cheeked" her. Still, she looked away, but she did not make any attempt to escape by the side-path, nor show resentment. No; ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... look ever so much nicer when you are awake," she further informed him, with a clear-eyed straightforwardness that was worse than disconcerting. In desperation he answered, with her own frankness, that she was nice looking ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... of the world, but entirely capable of taking care of himself. Moreover, with the renewed vigor displaying itself, he was far better looking than his new acquaintance had thought. His blue eyes, keen and clear, appealed to Hugh's love for straightforwardness; his wide mouth bespoke firmness, good nature, and the full ability to enjoy the humorous side of things. The lines about his clean-cut, beardless face were a trifle deep, and there was a network ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... difficult to treat has been handled by Dr. Drake with delicacy, earnestness and straightforwardness. It is a practical book destined ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... eighty, but still aggressive and full of enthusiasm, decided to give up the leadership of the Conservative party. He was succeeded by a fellow Nova Scotian, Mr Robert Laird Borden of Halifax. The new leader had been only four years in parliament, but his ability and straightforwardness had won instant recognition. Few changes had occurred in the ranks of the 'Ministry of all the Talents' of 1896. Sir Oliver Mowat and Sir Henri Joly de Lotbiniere had retired to lieutenant-governorships, and their places had been taken respectively {195} by Mr David Mills and ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... her brightest at these words; but there was no falling of the eye, or faltering of the voice, as she spoke with answering straightforwardness ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... little matters of delicacy, such as are apt to arise between artificial laws and gentlemen who happen to live near the sea, and to have large places that require restoring! I shall go home with a lighter heart. There is nothing in this world that brings the comfort of straightforwardness." ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... voluntary holding of the mind for many hours of each day in the position required for the work of educating uneducated minds, the constant effort to state facts clearly, distinctly, and freed from unnecessary details, almost universally induce a straightforwardness of speech, which savors, to others who are not immature, of brusqueness and positiveness, if it may not deserve the harsher names of asperity and arrogance. It is not these in essence, though it appear to be so, and thus teachers often give offense and excite opposition when these results ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... in word, deed, and thought, winneth him for its own; therefore, one should always seek that which is for his good. Effort after securing what is good, the properties of time, place, and means, acquaintance with the scriptures, activity, straightforwardness, and frequent meetings with those that are good,—these bring about prosperity. Perseverance is the root of prosperity, of gain, and of what is beneficial. The man that pursueth an object with perseverance and without giving it up in vexation, is really great, and enjoyeth ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... never demanded the same standards from Sally she had asked of herself. It was a family custom to regard her younger sister as a person chiefly to be gratified and adored. Yet it had never occurred to Alice that Sally could fail in any essential thing such as straightforwardness and sincerity. ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... for rule in that relation, and that, too, in a not altogether foolish manner. For though the author knows how to do justice to the simplicity of their politics, he knows how to do justice also to that practical determination and straightforwardness and largeness of sense, which even in the common sense of uneducated masses, is already struggling ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... sorry I cannot consent to make my answers as frank as your questions. You have the advantage of me in straightforwardness, I confess. Only you have got sun and wind ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... inspires a love and admiration for straightforwardness, truth and courage. This is one of best of the many good books Mr. Henty has produced, and deserves to be classed with his ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... brother. That vivacious traveller, Pere Huc, tells us he has seen a Tartar chief at dinner gravely hand over to an underling a piece of gristle he found himself unable to masticate, and that the gift was received with every semblance of gratitude and delight. But there is a simple straightforwardness about an act like this which commends it to our understanding. The Tartar did not assume the gristle to be palatable. He did not veil his motives for parting with it. He did not expand with the emotions of a philanthropist. And he did not ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... combination of circumstances, or of connivers, seemed to give Mr. Thorn unlimited facilities in the same kind. Fleda was quick-witted and skilful enough to work herself out of them once in a while; more often the combination was too much for her simplicity and straightforwardness. ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... any opinion as to the effect of this system upon the truthfulness and uprightness of the Shetland character?-I have formed the opinion that it has a very bad effect indeed upon the straightforwardness and truthfulness of the character of the people in this part of Shetland, for of course I have, had no experience elsewhere. I have found among the younger portion of the population generally a desire or at least a tendency, not to be so ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... last Sunday, Mr. Hodder," the young man volunteered, with that mixture of awkwardness and straightforwardness which often characterize his sex and age in referring to such matters. "And I had an idea of writing you, too, to tell you how much I liked what you said. But I know you must have had many letters. You've made ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... smiling. "I never read—" then Peter coughed, suddenly looked sad, and continued—"the parts that do not speak of me." "That isn't a lie," he told himself, "I don't read them." But he felt guilty. Clearly Peter was losing his old-time straightforwardness. ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... fellow-partner who supplied his pecuniary needs in the same way. At all events, there is no question that all through 1813 and 1814 Scott was kept in constant suspense and fear of bankruptcy, by the ill-success of John Ballantyne and Co., and the utter want of straightforwardness in John Ballantyne himself as to the bills out, and which had to be provided against. It was the publication of Waverley, and the consequent opening up of the richest vein not only in Scott's own genius, but in his popularity with the public, which alone ended these alarms; and ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... who soon find that it is the best policy to be fair and just in their dealings. We may well believe that this intelligent people had the wisdom to see their true interests, and to understand that trade can never prosper unless conducted with integrity and straightforwardness. The very fact that their trade did prosper, that their goods were everywhere in request, is sufficient proof of their commercial honesty, and of their superiority to those tricks which speedily ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... a love and admiration for straightforwardness, truth, and courage. This is one of the best of the many good books Mr. Henty has produced, and deserves to be classed with ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... epistles to his friends, written with a charming ease and straightforwardness, and containing much ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... the visit was paid, and afforded pleasure to all parties. The knight was pleased with the manners of the merchant, who, owing to his visit to Italy, had little of the formal gravity of his craft, while there was a heartiness and straightforwardness in his speech that well suited the bluff knight. The ladies were no less pleased with each other, and Dame Agatha found herself, to her surprise, chatting with her visitors on terms of equality, and discoursing on dress and ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... saluted the Earl, and in a few words told him that which he had seen. But the soul of William Douglas was utterly devoid of suspicion, both because he held himself so great that none could touch him, and also because, being high of spirit and open as the sky, he read into the acts of others his own straightforwardness and unsuspicion. ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... most choice and perfect; and in like manner the sublimity of simplicity in Marlowe's conception and expression of the agonies endured by Faustus under the immediate imminence of his doom gives the highest note of beauty, the quality of absolute fitness and propriety, to the sheer straightforwardness of speech in which his agonizing horror finds vent ever more and more terrible from the first to the last equally beautiful and fearful verse of that tremendous monologue which has no parallel in all the ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... not merely in Cocaigne but furtively swayed the tides of life everywhere the Moon keeps any power over tides. It was the mission of Anaitis to divert and turn aside and deflect: in this the jealous Moon abetted her because sunlight makes for straightforwardness. So Anaitis and the Moon were staunch allies. These mysteries of their private relations, however, as revealed to Jurgen, are not ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... The unadorned straightforwardness of the relation made it an amazing thing to hear, even more amazing than it would have been made by a more imaginative handling. Her obvious inability to cope with the unusual and villainous, combined with her entire willingness to obliterate herself in any manner in her whole-souled ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... with the insurance business that I first met Mr. George W. Perkins. He came to me with a letter of introduction from the then Speaker of the National House of Representatives, Tom Reed, which ran: "Mr. Perkins is a personal friend of mine, whose straightforwardness and intelligence will commend to you whatever he has to say. If you will give him proper opportunity to explain his business, I have no doubt that what he will say will be worthy of your attention." Mr. Perkins wished to see me with reference to a bill that had just been ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Sercombe could not but admire the straightforwardness of the brothers; their conventionality could not prevent them from feeling the dignity with which they acted on their convictions. The quixotic young fellows ought not to be cut for their behaviour! They could not court their society, but would treat them with consideration! ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... the whole of this period with a calm straightforwardness that we are not accustomed to in his writings. There is no doubt, I think, of all our critic's books, that his work on Browning is the least Chestertonian, which is not in any way to disparage it, but ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... endeared this brave and justly-famous Boer officer to us were his straightforwardness and unostentatious manner, his truthfulness, and the utter absence of affectation that distinguishes him. I am certain that he has written his simple narrative with candour and impartiality, and I feel equally certain, from what I know of him, ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... breath; Ashton-Kirk looked at Scanlon, and that gentleman nodded his satisfaction with the apparent straightforwardness ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... not. But it gives me the right to a fair chance to win a monopoly of your attentions." He was speaking low and earnestly, and his voice had a deep, rich timbre in it that thrilled and almost frightened her. She could not resent his straightforwardness. She felt that he was already asserting his claim upon her, and there was something tender and delightful in the sense of being claimed by such ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... stories which show Washington's straightforwardness, here is one which shows much diplomacy. He was asked by Volney, a Frenchman and a revolutionist, for a letter of recommendation to the American people. This request put him in an awkward position, for there were good reasons why he could not give it, ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... information is obtained more readily by cultivating the friendship of boys than by consulting the older folks. This tendency to disguise or to distort the truth, though it has its natural basis in a desire for self-protection, gives the Manbos a reputation for lack of that straightforwardness and frankness that is so noticeable among the Mandyas, even after very short acquaintance. This lack of frankness, coupled with a certain amount of natural shrewdness, makes the truth difficult to discover, unless the suggestion made before be carried out, ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... the soul of honor and had a sense of humor seldom found in one of Indian blood, and was as ready to romp and roughhouse as a boy of twelve. His straightforwardness and his tender care of Mrs. Sherman caused the Major to rejoice every day that he had transferred him to his service ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... no mistake when he had told Sanderson that Judge Graney was honest. Graney looked honest. There was about him an atmosphere of straightforwardness that was unmistakable and convincing. It was because he was honest that a certain governor ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... allow themselves on the score of expediency—I don't quite know how they put it—but it has much to answer for. I never find that my Roman Catholic friends are true, as my Protestant friends are. There is always a something kept back, a reservation; a want of straightforwardness, even when there is no positive deception—I can't describe the thing I mean, but it is quite perceptible, and causes an uneasy feeling of distrust, which is all the more tormenting from its vagueness and want of definition. ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... action. She had, in many ways, the naive purity, the unconsidered faith and confidence of a child still in the nursery. She amazed me sometimes by her ignorance; she delighted me frequently by her refreshing truth and straightforwardness. She felt a little, I think, that I did not yield her quite the extravagant admiration of the ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... were not pianos, but those invisible stilettos with which two women conduct a deadly feud, and politely tear each other's eyes out. George Sand was famous then beyond her present-day esteem, and she was a woman of vigour almost masculine and of a straightforwardness which was almost an affectation. She loved to go about in boots and blouse, and to ride bareback; she smoked cigars, and wrote at night. The Comtesse d'Agoult was eminently feminine. She would rather have spent one thousand francs on a gown ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... Straightforwardness and intensity of purpose marked the Southern temper. If a county or a city voted "dry," practically all the whites aided to see the mandate enforced. The liquor traffic was thus regulated more stringently and prohibited ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... herself with a sort of shamed and angry dignity. "Other women feel so about men, and why should I not?" she had said; "and I shall never fail to keep the feeling behind more important things." She had accepted the fact of it with childlike straightforwardness as she accepted all other facts of life, and now she wondered if she really did care for him so much. She thought over and over everything Abby had said, and saw plainly before her mental vision those poor women parting with their ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the taste of his age, which shunned such sheer straightforwardness in poetry, the "Book of the Duchess" contains no further transparent reference to the actual circumstances of the wedded life which had come to so premature an end—for John of Gaunt had married Blanche of Lancaster in 1359;—and ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... instinctive gestures and habits which may suggest to female acquaintances the remark that such a person "ought to have been a man." The brusque, energetic movements, the attitude of the arms, the direct speech, the inflexions of the voice, the masculine straightforwardness and sense of honor, and especially the attitude toward men, free from any suggestion either of shyness or audacity, will often suggest the underlying psychic abnormality to a ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... continuous lines; and orderly successions of motions and times. In spiritual creatures, it is their own constant building up by true knowledge and consecutive efforts to higher perfection, and the singleness and straightforwardness of their tendencies to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... broken in to verse,—through the pastoral fancies and Italian conceits of the strictly Elizabethan time,—to the passionate reality of Shakespeare: yet a general uniformity of tone prevails. Few readers can fail to observe the natural sweetness of the verse, the single-hearted straightforwardness of the thoughts:—nor less, the limitation of subject to the many phases of one passion, which then characterised our lyrical poetry,—unless when, as with Drummond and Shakespeare, the "purple light of Love" is tempered by a spirit of ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... system. "The duties of Brahmans, Kshatriyas, and Vaisyas, and of Sudras, too, O terror of your foes, are distinguished according to the qualities born of nature. Tranquillity, restraint of the sense, penance, purity, forgiveness, straightforwardness, also knowledge, experience, and belief in the future world, this is the natural duty of the Brahmans. Valour, glory, courage, dexterity, not slinking away from battle, gifts, exercise of lordly power, this is the natural duty of Kshatriyas. Agriculture, ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... the poet's too short existence. Long will the youthful traditions of the Lyceum recall the outlines of Pushkin's character; long will the unbiassed judgment of boyhood do justice to the manliness, the honour, the straightforwardness of the great poet's nature, and hand down, from one young generation to another, numberless traits exemplifying the passionate warmth of his heart, the gaiety of his temper, and the vastness of his memory. In all cases where circumstances come fairly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... possibilities lay ready to open before him; now he felt himself caught in the meshes of a stupid, empty, valueless, frivolous life, out of which he saw no means of extricating himself even if he wished to, which he hardly did. He remembered how proud he was at one time of his straightforwardness, how he had made a rule of always speaking the truth, and really had been truthful; and how he was now sunk deep in lies: in the most dreadful of lies—lies considered as the truth by all who surrounded him. And, as far as he could see, there ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... it might convulse and terrify us, as though the voice of some hitherto concealed and evil spirit had suddenly cried out in our midst. Or how do the following propositions strike our ears?—That passion is better than stocism or hypocrisy; that straightforwardness, even in evil, is better than losing oneself in trying to observe traditional morality; that the free man is just as able to be good as evil, but that the unemancipated man is a disgrace to nature, and has no share in heavenly or earthly bliss; finally, that ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... deer-forest. At Berriedale, the road traversed by the coach is simply appalling: boards marked Dangerous forewarn all wheel-men that risks cannot be taken with impunity. An honest descent can be easily coped with, but here the road to the glen is not merely steep, it is as lacking in straightforwardness as the links of Forth. Once down at the level of the village, the breeze no longer blows fresh and chilly, but subsides into a quiet air, grateful with the odour of flowers. Passengers are requested to walk up the corresponding hill to a level equal to the height of the road before the interruption ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... is, that no biographer of Pope should have hunted upon the traces indicated by him. Any solution of Pope's virulence, and of the master's bitter retaliation, even as a solution, is so far entitled to attention; apart from which the mere straightforwardness of this man's story, and its minute circumstantiality, weigh greatly in its favor. To our thinking, he unfolds the whole affair in the simple explanation, nowhere else to be found, that the master of the school, the mean avenger of a childish ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... untouched where others had prematurely succumbed. His hair, which he wore short, and his beard, which was full, had already grown gray, and gave him the look of a Puritan. The proverbial honesty of the Brazilian merchants and fazenders showed itself in his features, of which straightforwardness was the leading characteristic. His calm temperament seemed to indicate an interior fire, kept well under control. The fearlessness of his look denoted a deep-rooted strength, to which, when danger threatened, he ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... had insisted on going in to the Stopping-House to see Mrs. Corbett and tell her what she was going to do. It was contrary to Evelyn's straightforwardness to do anything in an under-handed way, and she felt that she ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... private affairs, were not men of large capacity, and they had not the quick and sound judgment of character and circumstances necessary in banking. Nor were they very fortunate in their manager. Mr. Pearson, although he might have been taken as a model of honesty, truthfulness, and straightforwardness, was a phlegmatic, heavy man, and his manners were, to say the least, unprepossessing. The bank was not a success. Negotiations were, a few years after, entered into, and arrangements resulted, by which the Birmingham Banking Company took ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... was always best to plunge straight into the subject in hand, be it never so grim or painful. Life has no veneering for them; they look hard realities in the face and meet them as they can. They are the true philosophers, and their straightforwardness about grief and disease is not callousness; it is directness, and generally means as much, if not more, feeling than the hysterical wailings of more cultivated ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of years, and absorbed by the cares which the general direction of the Company entailed, M. Garnier left the entire superintendence of the Paris house to M. Carbon, the director. M. Carbon was the embodiment of kindness, joviality and straightforwardness. He was no theologian, and was so far from being a man of superior mind, that at first one would be tempted to look upon him as a very simple, not to say common, person. But as one came to know him better, one ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... torn to pieces. Dicky's eyes met his without wavering—a desperate yet resolute look—and Ismail knew that the little man would sell his life dearly, if he had but half a chance. He also saw in Dicky's eyes the old honesty, the fearless straightforwardness—and an appeal too, not humble, but still eager and downright. Ismail's fury was great, for the blue devils had him by the heels that day; but on the instant he saw the eyes of Sadik the Mouffetish, and their ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... poetic spectacles. In Germany Auerbach had, in his "Black Forest Village Tales" (1843, 1853, 1854), discarded the healthful but unflattering realism of Jeremias Gotthelf (1797-1854), and chosen, with a half-didactic purpose, to contrast the peasant's honest rudeness and straightforwardness with the refined sophistication and hypocrisy of the higher classes. George Sand, with her beautiful Utopian genius, poured forth a torrent of rural narrative of a crystalline limpidity ("Mouny Robin," "La Mare au Diable," "La Petite Fadette," etc., 1841-1849), which is as ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... piratical hordes: and he did his best to restore peace and to promote order. But his character was merely that of a practical, common-sense, fighting West Saxon, brought up in the camp of his father and brothers, and doing his rough work in life with the honest straightforwardness of a simple, hard-headed, religious, but only half-educated ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen |
