"Truculent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pass ere the journey's end was reached. Could stout hearted Phil have had a fleeting vision of what lay before them, even he might have hesitated about going on. But he fully believed that he was carrying an olive branch of peace that could not fail to subdue the truculent nature of the dreaded McGee. And it was in that confident spirit ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... was a welcome guest in pleasant houses; but living in a careless, shiftless, extravagant way, he was presently poor, and, instead of giving his memoirs the motto, peccavi, and inditing a warning, he dashes off a truculent defiance. Practical publishers and practical men of all sorts invest their earnings in Michigan Central or Cincinnati and Dayton instead, in steady works and devoted days, and reap a pleasant harvest of dividends. Our friends the authors invest in prime Havanas, Rhenish, ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... personified, an angel with a flaming sword, beating back envious assailants from the beloved Fatherland. He saw his neighbors not as peaceful nations who had no possible desire to attack him, but on the contrary lived in constant fear of him, but as a band, of envious and truculent conspirators who could only be kept in order by the sudden stamp of the jackboot and the menacing clatter of the sabre. He insensibly imbibed the Nietzsche doctrine that the immorality of the Superman may be as ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... tattered gutter-scum and ruffians, of both sexes, he had ever read or dreamed of. There were huge stalwart men, brown with exposure, long-haired, and clothed in fantastic rags; there were middle-sized youths, of truculent countenance, and similarly clad; there were blind mendicants, with patched or bandaged eyes; crippled ones, with wooden legs and crutches; diseased ones, with running sores peeping from ineffectual wrappings; there was a villain-looking ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... it was high time for some other institution to shelter this touchy and truculent person, and that he would lay the case before the next weekly Visitor and ask for it to be submitted to the Committee at their ensuing ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... had had a little time to cool, they were ready enough to acknowledge their mistake in imagining a similarity between General Blood-and-Thunder's truculent physiognomy and the benign visage on the mountain-side. But now, again, there were reports and many paragraphs in the newspapers, affirming that the likeness of the Great Stone Face had appeared upon the broad shoulders of a certain eminent statesman. He, like Mr. ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... looked more tired than tough. Out from under their fierce, truculent bravado showed the fiercer hunger for common things and comforts. Nelsen knew. The record was ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... is sound, and its due application Is fraught with undoubted advantage to some, But I'm free to remark that my own situation Represents a recalcitrant re-sidu-um; Clocks I cannot abide with their truculent ticking— A nuisance I always have striven to scotch— And I gain very little assistance in sticking To work, if ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various
... position, and to abandon the youth was impossible. Though it was not likely that the Duke of York would hang him if aware of his rank, he might be detained as a hostage or put to heavy ransom, or he might never be brought to the Duke's presence at all, but be put to death by some truculent underling, incredulous of a Scotsman's tale, if indeed he were not too proud to tell it. Anyway, Sir Patrick felt bound to ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... truculent, and smiling; the frank audacious faces of men barefooted, well armed and noiseless. They thronged the narrow length of our schooner's decks with their ornamented and barbarous crowd, with the variegated colours of checkered sarongs, red turbans, ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... Alston to the court-room during the Burr trial is better conveyed if there be held in mind the personality of that eccentric and extraordinary man, so prominent in the history of America and the traditions of Virginia—John Randolph of Roanoke. Irascible, high-voiced, high-headed, truculent, insolent, vitriolic—yet gallant, courteous, kind, just, and fair; the enemy and the friend in turn of almost every public man of his day; truckling to none, defiant of all, sure to do what could not be predicted of any ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... fire, rose in a body and rushed towards her, jealously clamouring for attention. She patted them all round with a beautiful impartiality, cuffed the Great Dane for trampling on a minute Pekingese, settled a dispute between the truculent Irish terrier and an aristocratic Chow, and ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... demanded. During his mission into Abyssinia his natural demands for support were completely ignored, and he was left to whatever fate might befall him. When he succeeded in extricating himself from that perilous position, he found that the Khedive was so annoyed at his inability to exact from his truculent neighbour a treaty without any accompanying concessions, that he paid no attention to him, and seized the opportunity to hasten the close of his appointment by wilfully perverting the sense of several ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... the results of his robberies and 'brandschatzungs.' "'Tis a most courageous fellow," said Parma, "but rather a desperate highwayman than a valiant soldier." Martin's couple of lances had expanded into a corps of free companions, the most truculent, the most obedient, the most rapacious in Christendom. Never were freebooters more formidable to the world at large, or more docile to their chief, than were the followers of General Schenk. Never was a more finished captain of highwaymen. He was a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of the small, truculent Mike in frenzied revolt with a club against the idea of being decked with jewelry.... Mike turned to the two big men and ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... those particular bullocks loafing on his paddock. If they came across the river again, he would hunt them back into Mondunbarra—he would do that much—but Muster M'Intyre's orders were orders. Two bullock drivers (here a truculent look came over the retainer's face) had selected in sight of the very wool-shed; and now all working bullocks found loafing on the run were to be yarded at the station—this lot being specially noticed, for Muster M'Intyre had a bit of ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... Billy Warner of Ponape with his entourage of sixteen truculent, evil-faced Solomon Islanders was not regarded with enthusiasm by the chief officer and the ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... music ceased as suddenly as it began and, warming himself at the great stove in the hall, Belding heard a short laugh and an exclamation. "Too much imagination," exploded Clark. The tone was one of utter incredulity. At that the young man felt curiously truculent. Elsie was only seventeen, while Clark was certainly not less than thirty-five. Then the latter ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... in the hut, I saw the messengers arrive, and they were great truculent-looking fellows. There were four of them, and evidently they had travelled night and day. They entered with a swagger and ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... talked very freely to the Dean, defending himself, and going back in his reminiscences to the reign of Elizabeth. He declared that the world would yet be persuaded of his innocence, and he once more scandalised the Dean by his truculent cheerfulness. He ate a hearty breakfast, and smoked a pipe of tobacco. It was now time to leave the Gate House; but before he did so, a cup of sack was brought to him. The servant asked if the wine was to his liking, and Raleigh replied, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... attention to colored districts. My white neighbor glares elaborately. I walk softly, lest I disturb him. The children jeer as I pass to work. The women in the street car withdraw their skirts or prefer to stand. The policeman is truculent. The elevator man hates to serve Negroes. My job is insecure because the white union wants it and does not want me. I try to lunch, but no place near will serve me. I go forty blocks to Marshall's, but the Committee of Fourteen closes ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... when I'm handled right, but if I'm handled wrong—" Stickney did not finish his sentence; but his truculent air ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... themselves face to face with the lines of Mataafa in the German plantation of Vaitele. The armies immediately fraternised; kava was made by the ladies, as who should say tea, at home, and partaken of by the braves with many truculent expressions. One chief on the King's side, revolted by the extent of these familiarities, began to beat his followers with a staff. But both parties were still intermingled between the lines, and the chiefs on either side were conversing, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... eight bishops, four earls, four barons, and one banneret. The earls were Pembroke, Arundel, Richmond, and Hereford. Of these the Breton Earl of Richmond was the most friendly to the king, but it was significant to find so truculent a politician as Hereford making common cause with Pembroke. The most important of the four barons was Roger Mortimer of Wigmore. Lancaster though not paramount was still powerful, but his habit of absenting himself from parliaments made it useless to offer him a place in the council, and he was ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... ship of La Saussaye, with Biard and his colleague Quentin on board, was forced to yield to the fury of the western gales and bear away for the Azores. To Biard the change of destination was not unwelcome. He stood in fear of the truculent Governor of Virginia, and his tempest-rocked slumbers were haunted with unpleasant visions of a rope's end. It seems that some of the French at Port Royal, disappointed in their hope of hanging him, had commended him to Sir Thomas Dale as a proper subject for the gallows ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... never lost an opportunity of placing her in unpleasant positions, whereby she might be, what he called, hardened. Paul sighed to think of his mother's position as he folded up the letter. She had a bad time with the truculent husband she had married. "And I can't believe she became his wife of her own free will," thought Paul; "probably the governor bullied her into it in his ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... of J[i]jil was now called to a much more serious enterprize than heading his truculent highlanders against a neighbouring tribe—though it must be admitted that he was always in his element when fisticuffs were in request. An appeal had come from Algiers. The Moors there had endured for seven years the embargo of the Spaniards; they had seen their fregatas ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... in charge of our laager hated the verdamnt Englaender and lost no opportunity of bulldozing and threatening us. One of the Canadians who had been in the American Navy was unusually truculent. The German purposely bunted him one day. "Don't do that again!" The German repeated the act. The sailor jolted him in the jaw so that he went to dreamland for fifteen minutes. The prisoner was taken to the guardroom and we never heard his ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... self-assertion the boy becomes an enemy of all authority and very often anti-social. The "rebel" in the Socialist camp is a good specimen of the man whose self-assertive period was injured by authority, and I suspect that the truculent drunk is letting off the steam that he should have let off at ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... long unchanged as the actors. I can see the same Othello to-day, if I choose, that when I was a boy I saw smothering Mrs. Duff-Desdemona with the pillow, under the instigations of Mr. Cooper-Iago. A few stone heavier than he was then, no doubt, but the same truculent blackamoor that took by the thr-r-r-oat the circumcised dog in Aleppo, and told us about it in the old Boston Theatre. In the course of a fortnight, if I care to cross the water, I can see Mademoiselle Dejazet in the same parts I saw her ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... forties.' Broadway here might be the offspring of Shaftesbury Avenue and Leicester Square, with, somehow, some of Fleet Street also in its ancestry. I passed two men on the sidewalk, their hats on the back of their heads, arguing fiercely. One had slightly long hair. The other looked the more truculent, and was saying to him, intensely, "See here! We contracted with you to supply us with sonnets at five dollars per sonnet—" I passed up a side-street, one of those deserted ways that abound just ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... Funky Warren. I'm going to torture you," he announced with a truculent scowl and a suggestive licking of ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... of the corral Bob looked out upon a world full of grinning faces. A sick dismay rose in him and began to submerge his heart. They were glad he had been thrown. The earth was inhabited by a race of brutal and truculent savages. What was the use of trying? He could never hold out ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... 400 hostages." The simple truth is that in spite of his long pedigree and good blood Bismarck was not quite a gentleman in our sense of the word; and as this accounts for his ferocious bluster and truculent bloodthirsty utterances when he was in power in the war time, so it was the keynote to his more recent undignified attitude and howls of querulous impatience of his altered situation. It must be said of him, however, ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... ascetic frame and mobile features of the Hindu dreamer in his plain garment of white home-spun, and, beside him, one of his chief Mahomedan allies, Shaukat Ali, with his great burly figure and heavy jowl and somewhat truculent manner and his opulent robes embroidered with the Turkish crescent, I wondered how far Mr. Gandhi had succeeded in converting his Mahomedan friend to the principle of Ahimsa. Perhaps Mr. Gandhi guessed what was passing in my mind when I asked him how the fundamental ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... no desire to repeat my experiences amongst these people of 1896, when my life was more than once in jeopardy during their orgies. However, the natives of Erktrik (as this place is called), were so openly hostile that even the usually truculent Mikouline, who once, under the influence of his favourite beverage, had offered to accompany me to a much warmer and remoter place than this, was paralysed with fear. I therefore resolved to push on early the following day (April 22), but that night we were ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... of no effect, or of less; they had to go, on those terms; and Pollnitz, making for his Majesty's apartment next morning as usual, was twitched by a Gens-d'arme, 'No admittance!' And it was days before the matter would come round again, under earnest protestations from the one side, and truculent rebukes from the other." [Pollnitz (abridged), ii. 50.] Figure the Crown-Prince, figure the poor sick Majesty; and what a time ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... paid a call that afternoon it was not on any of the young women he knew. He went to see Mrs. Gregory. She was at home—he had arranged for that by telephone—and the one butler of the neighborhood admitted him. It was a truculent young man, for all his politeness, who confronted Mrs. Gregory in her drawing-room—a quietly truculent young man, who came to the point while he was still ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... might have been said to date. No one seeing his mouth had before that time been prevailed upon to trust him. Nature has a way of hanging out signs and then covering them up, so that the casual fail to see. He was a man of medium height, with abnormally long arms and a somewhat truculent way of walking, as if his foot was ever ready to kick anything or any person who might ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... of Prodigal Sons, To-day is a prodigious coxcomb, but To-morrow is a very poltroon, taking fright at the big words of his predecessor. To-day is the truculent captain of old world comedy, To-morrow the ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... victory, Italy took her place in arms by the side of the Allies. And now the heart of old Rome, so long perturbed, is tranquil. With heroic confidence she relies on her brave sons, led by her dauntless King, to justify her. And when she hears the truculent boast of our enemy that after he has disposed of Russia, he will destroy Italy as a power in Europe, she answers calmly, "Yes, when the last Roman capable of bearing arms lies dead in Roman soil—perhaps then, but ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... six weeks now since his experience in Queen's Gate, and he had gone through a variety of emotions. Bewildered terror was the first, a nervous interest the next, a truculent skepticism the third; and lately, to his astonishment, the nervous ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... neighbour was evidently of that truculent disposition which merely growls at blandishments. He snorted and replied testily, "That is all very well, sir, but I don't believe a ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... man, well built and well set up. In court he presented rather a formidable appearance with his truculent chin, his straight, firm mouth, and his commanding presence. Yet there was nothing about him now which would have inspired fear in the most nervous of witnesses. He looked like a man all broken ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the walls of the castle. They had greeted his return amongst them with sneers and derisive allusions to his immersion, but with a few choicely-aimed blows he had cuffed the noisiest into silence and a more subservient humour. He had spoken to them in a rasping, truculent tone, issuing orders that he meant should be obeyed, unless the disobeyer were eager for ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... match for them in oars, even if their purpose be such as you suspect—for which suspicion, when all is said, there is no ground. On then!" He addressed himself to the watermen, whipping out a pistol, and growing truculent in mien and voice. "To your oars! Row, you dogs, or I'll pistol you ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... no appeals," said the Major, with a truculent look. "No man shall appeal to Dick Querto till he is ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... man's head rested on the knee of the night porter, a personage wearing a kind of livery, a strongly built, truculent-looking villain, whose duties, no doubt, comprised the putting of people out as well as the letting them into ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... rode off with a lantern; it was a fine starry night, though pretty cold. We left the lantern at Tanuga- manono, and then down in the starlight. I found Apia, and myself, in a strange state of flusteration; my own excitement was gloomy and (I may say) truculent; others appeared imbecile; some sullen. The best place in the whole town was the hospital. A longish frame-house it was, with a big table in the middle for operations, and ten Samoans, each with an average of four sympathisers, ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... won't," says that truculent person distinctly. "I want to be a big general with a cocked hat, and to kill people. I don't want to be a husband at all. What's the ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... articles in the Mail, and as eager to know and reward their author as he had been to apprehend and punish the earlier detractor. Button had begun to "wobble," as Bill expressed it, in his spleen against Lanier until so suddenly "braced" by the truculent stand of Captain Snaffle, whose half-drunken words the previous night were by this time known all over ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... mask should be torn from the villain's face. Why should a man be allowed to stab his neighbour in the dark!" As a matter of fact, I am convinced that anonymity makes, not for irresponsibility but for responsibility, and that there are many men who, though truculent, offensive, and personal when they write with the "I," will show a true sense of moderation and responsibility when they use the editorial "we." The man who writes for a newspaper very soon gets a strong sense of what is right and proper ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... looked at the beady eyes, sneering, truculent, cowardly, and there leaped into his vision, as on a screen, the same eyes when their owner was making a sale in the store below—subservient eyes, smug, and ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... this 'bout him 'putting out' Tom Cragg, in three?" At this there was a sudden silence and all eyes were turned towards the speaker, a small, red-headed fellow, with a truculent eye. "Come," said he, blowing out a cloud of tobacco smoke, "in three rounds! What d'ye ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... opposite side of the coulee, the boys seemed to be laboring quite as fruitlessly with the other herder. They heard Big Medicine's truculent bellow, as he leaned from the saddle and waved a fist close to the face of the herder, but, though they rode with their eyes fixed upon the group, they failed to see any resultant movement of dogs, sheep ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... and cannot act upon. The stout squire who prides himself upon his obstinacy, and whose pretty daughter manages him as easily as she manages her poodle, is a favorite character in English comedy. Every one knows some truculent gentleman who loudly proclaims that one half of mankind are knaves and the other half would be if they dared, but who would go mad with despair if he really believed the atrocious principles he loves to announce. Jefferson was not so constituted as to make the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... disappointed by this lack of feeling, and said to her husband at night that she had expected better things from Archibald; but if she had gone suddenly into Bauldie's room—for that was his real name, Archibald being only the thing given in baptism—she would have found that truculent worthy sobbing aloud and covering his head with the blankets, lest his elder brother, who slept in the same room, should hear him. You have no reason to believe me, and his mother would not have believed me, but—as ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... possibly for more, Mr. Burne-Jones was a resolute opponent of the Royal Academy, as resolute, though not so truculent, an opponent as Mr. Whistler. When he became a popular painter Mr. Agnew gave him a commission of fifteen thousand pounds—the largest, I believe, ever given—to paint four pictures, the "Briar Rose" series. Some time after—before ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... immediate admittance. A short consultation took place between my friend and their host, who agreed that no resistance could be offered, that the door should be opened, and they must all submit to their fate. Then the banditti rushed in with fierce gestures; truculent men, with shaggy hair and beards, wrapped in dark capotes, with long guns in their hands, and daggers in their belts and bosoms. “Spare our lives, and take our money, and all that we have,” was the cry of some of the travellers. Nor were the bandits slow in falling upon the sacs and malles, ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... how Jernyngham had driven a truculent rabble out of Sebastian, he could imagine the scene in the shed; but it was evident that the boiler-makers bore ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... TIM TRUCULENT no more. Where was the excited crowd he was wont to address in Sessions of not very long ago—the jeering Ministerialists, the applauding Liberals, the enthusiastic band of united Irishmen, with PARNELL sitting placid in their midst, he only quiet amid the turbulent throng? Now the House ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 1, 1891 • Various
... the king, when he had shaken off slumber, told the vision to a man skilled in interpretations, who explained the wolf to denote a son that would be truculent and the word swan as signifying a daughter; and foretold that the son would be deadly to enemies and the daughter treacherous to her father. The result answered to the prophecy. Hadding's daughter, Ulfhild, who was wife to a certain private person called Guthorm, was moved either by anger ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... while the first murderer gives account of what he has done, there comes a flash of truculent joy at the "twenty trenched gashes" on Banquo's head. Thus Macbeth makes welcome to his imagination those very details of physical horror which are so soon to turn sour in him. As he runs out to embrace these cruel circumstances, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... (unmerciful) 914.1; relentless &c (revengeful) 919. cruel; brutal, brutish; savage, savage as a bear, savage as a tiger; ferine^, ferocious; inhuman; barbarous, barbaric, semibarbaric, fell, untamed, tameless, truculent, incendiary; bloodthirsty &c (murderous) 361; atrocious; bloodyminded^. fiendish, fiendlike^; demoniacal; diabolic, diabolical; devilish, infernal, hellish, Satanic; Tartaran. Adv. malevolently &c adj.; with bad ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... met on April 2, 1860. The frontier lines of six states were effaced. The man who had so largely contributed to this great result stood there to defend his honour, almost his life. Guerrazzi compared him to the Earl of Clarendon—"hard towards the king, truculent to Parliament, who thought in his pride that he could do everything." Cavour retorted: perhaps if Clarendon had been able to show in defence of his conduct many million Englishmen delivered from foreign yoke, several counties added to his master's possessions, Parliament would ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... the man who had done the shooting, his voice truculent. "Anybody got anything to say? Say it quick, if ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... his side. A look of dismay came over his face, and his truculent manner changed with a suddenness that forced a smile even to the ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... quietly truculent. He drew Bigot aside. "There are more ways than one to choke a dog, Bigot," said he. "You may put a tight collar outside his throat, or a sweetened roll inside of it. Some course must be found, and that promptly. We shall, before many days, have La Corne ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... difficult to give any account of this remarkable correspondence; it is too far away from us, and perhaps not yet far enough, in point of time and manner; the imagination is baffled by these stilted literary utterances, warming, in bravura passages, into downright truculent nonsense. Clarinda has one famous sentence in which she bids Sylvander connect the thought of his mistress with the changing phases of the year; it was enthusiastically admired by the swain, but on the modern mind produces mild amazement and alarm. "Oh, Clarinda", writes Burns, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... experiences. With the appearance of British paramountcy at the Cape came a hint of law and order, of progress and its accompaniment—taxation. The bare whisper of discipline of any kind was sufficient to send the truculent Boer trekking away to the far freedom of the veldt. Quantities of them took to their lumbering tented waggons, drawn by long teams of oxen, and put a safe distance between themselves and the new-comers. All they wanted was a free home, conducted in their own gipsy ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... a whisky and soda before the Rev. J. D. Eltham, also sliding the tobacco jar nearer to his hand. The refined and sensitive face of the clergy-man offered no indication of the truculent character of the man. His scanty fair hair, already gray over the temples, was silken and soft-looking; in appearance he was indeed a typical English churchman; but in China he had been known as "the fighting missionary," and had fully deserved the title. In fact, this peaceful-looking ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... lived for months as his guests at the huge ugly house which was his home; and Toffy accepted it all, and philosophized about it in his grave way, and read his Bible, and loved Mrs. Avory. No one but Toffy would have loved her; she was quite plain and she was separated from her husband—a truculent gentleman who employed his leisure moments in making his wife miserable. And she had a daughter of ten years old towards whose maintenance Mrs. Avory made blouses and trimmed parasols for which her friends hardly ever ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... instead of bestowing it upon those bad men. Everybody knew they were bad. It was well known that they had stolen a boat from Hinopari, who was very aged and feeble and had no sons; and that afterwards, by the truculent recklessness of their demeanour, they had frightened the poor old man into holding his tongue about it. Yet everybody knew of it. It was one of the tolerated scandals of Sambir, disapproved and accepted, a manifestation of that base acquiescence in success, of that inexpressed ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... ran after me and pulled me back. Once, before I had learnt to swim, I was caught by the tide between Broadstairs and Ramsgate; but some sailors came and took me off in a boat. Once again, I, who cannot claim to be physically robust, was challenged to single combat by a truculent Belgian miner of six foot three, with whom I had refused to drink pecquet; but a steam tram happened to pass opportunely, and I escaped in it. Lastly, there was my Alpine brigand. He, with all his faults, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... tall man, of massive and powerful build, with somewhat harsh features, black hair and beard just touched with grey, and a sallow complexion sunburnt as brown as a berry. According to the prevalent fashion in those latitudes, he wore truculent-looking boots up to his knees, and a big sombrero hat slouched over his brow. There was a stern, hard expression about his face, except when he smiled or looked at Barbara Thorne. He did not look stern now, as she came ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... The truculent voice, with its attempt at oiliness, the small red eyes under the shock of hair, the thick purple lips, had an extraordinary effect on Patsy. He hated the tramp, yet he felt a queer sick fear of him. Once, when Sir Shawn ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... we could see assassins sharpening their daggers or, perhaps, executioners putting the finishing touches on their scimitars. There were cavernous rooms where conspirators were crouched round a tiny charcoal fire. Groups of truculent young Arabs followed us shouting objurgations, and accepting small coins as ransom. We had glimpses of a mosque, the outside of a prison, and the inside of what once was a harem. On returning to the steamer one gentleman fell overboard and, swimming to the shore, was rescued by a swarthy ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... confronting the hurried gentleman who had run upstairs. This sprinter had produced an automatic pistol, and was pointing it in a truculent manner at his head. Archie stared at his host, and his host ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... opportunity; he throws off a torrent of fiery sparks in advance, and gives full notice to Parker that he will run his train right into him, if he can come up with his rear. This man is not malicious, but truculent; like the elder Scaliger, of whom it was observed that, having been an officer of cavalry up to his fortieth year (when he took to learning Greek), he always fancied himself on horseback, charging, and cutting throats in the way ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... overhead trains—almost incessant at this hour—benumbed the ear, and every side-street rang with the hideous clatter of drays and express-carts, each driver, each motor-man, laboring in a kind of sullen frenzy to reach his barn before six o'clock, while truculent pedestrians, tired, eager, and exacting, trod upon one another's heels in their ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... superstition; yet their devotion is addressed to young men and to brothers. Now the Arians, besides their forces, in which they surpass the several nations just recounted, are in their persons stern and truculent; and even humour and improve their natural grimness and ferocity by art and time. They wear black shields, their bodies are painted black, they choose dark nights for engaging in battle; and by the very ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... into his field of vision the lad was in full stride, running like a whippet, chart under one arm, water-jar under the other. He checked himself to ease the door behind him just as the truculent captor of the Royal James brig reached the foot of the ladder and let his gaze rove about the cabin. Sinking to the floor of the storeroom, Joe was afraid that for once he was about to swoon like a silly maid at sight of a mouse. As he had truly said, ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... plenty of reformers: some as truculent as Martin Luther; others as beaming and benevolent as if the pelting of the world had only mellowed them, and no amount of denunciatory thunder could sour the milk of human kindness creaming in their ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... the sea-fog was very thick, I discovered Balmoral, but not my Aunt. The truculent-looking proprietor of the house, who answered the door, condescended to inform me that my relative "was the difficultest lady he'd ever had to do for. And that she'd left two days a-gone." But where she had betaken herself to, he either would not or could not tell me. "You'd best try along this row," ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various
... Zimmermann might be provided with a number of such good and reliable soldiers selected by our General Staff," and he added with a truculent snort, "We could do with that sum of a thousand pounds here. You must put in a claim for it, Hillyard. Otherwise ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... consoled herself with careering about, taking a last leave of her beloved steed-a mangy-looking pony-and performing various freaks with it, then singing a truculent song of revenge, in pursuance of which she hid herself to await the bridal procession. And as the bride came on, among her attendants Dolores detected unmistakably those eyes of Gerald's! She squeezed Miss Hackett's hand, and saw little more of the final catastrophe. Somehow ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is called upon to contribute a few sous to the fund for making cannon. When I got there it was about 8.30. The venerable Blanqui was seated at a table on the tribune; before him were two assessors. One an unwholesome citizen, with long blond hair hanging down his back, the other a most truculent-looking ruffian. The hall was nearly full; many were in blouses, the rest in uniform; about one-fifth of the audience was composed of women, who either knitted, or nourished the infants, which they ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... right-minded woman's eyes. I shall speak to him myself—I will have the truth from his own lips if I have to wring it out by main force," said Caspar speaking more to himself than to Mary Trent, and quite unaware how truculent an appearance he presented at that moment ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... His tone was truculent, and Carlsen did not appear disposed to check him. He appeared not quite certain of the temper of the hunters. Deming, like Rainey, evidently chafed under ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... others that this is their effect the thoughtful apologist for sports will not rest content, and commonly, it is to be admitted, he does not rest content. His discontent with his own vindication of the practice in question is ordinarily shown by his truculent tone and by the eagerness with which he heaps up asseverations in support of his position. But why are apologies needed? If there prevails a body of popular sentient in favor of sports, why is not that fact a sufficient legitimation? The protracted ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... Wilbraham's, except a roof over my head, till circumstances sent me out into the bush again. In the daytime there were the mine and the mill. At night there was the bare living room of Wilbraham's shack, without a book, or a paper, or a decent chair; Wilbraham himself, fat, pig-headed, truculent, stumping the devil's sentry-go up and down the bare floor, talking eternally about himself and the mine, till a saint must have loathed the two of them; Thompson, the mine superintendent, silent, slow and stupid, playing ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... The truculent Dowler figured before in "The Tuggs at Ramsgate"—a very amusing and Pickwickian tale—under the title of Capt. Waters, who exhibits the same simulated ferocity and jealousy of his spouse. Cruickshank's sketch, too, of the Captain is like that of ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... took in fitting out and manning those swift privateers, concerning whose depredations upon British commerce we shall have something to say in a later chapter. "It is a doomed town," said Vice-admiral Warren. "The truculent inhabitants of Baltimore must be tamed with the weapons which shook the wooden turrets of Copenhagen," cried the editor of a great London paper. But, nevertheless, Baltimore did not fall before the invader, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... by a figure emerging from the obscurity of the house. Pompey Hollidew peered at them from the low, stone lintel. "Letty," he pronounced, in a voice at once whining and truculent; "who?—oh! that Makimmon.... Letty, come in the house." He caught her arm and dragged her incontinently toward the door. "... rascal," Gordon heard him mutter, "spendthrift. If you ever walk again with Gordon Makimmon," the old man, ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... effective excitant; and at least to one old gentleman the spectacle of my successful struggles against sleep—and I hope they were successful—cheered the flight of time. He, when he was not catching flies or playing tricks upon his neighbours, gloated with a fixed, truculent eye upon the stages of my agony; and once, when the service was drawing towards a close, he winked at me ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... victory or defeat. Even the howling blast, which lately, with its fitful voice, increased the terrors of the scene, is now softened into a low and mournful murmur, emblematical of the dismal tranquillity that reigns around. The smiling face of nature is bloted and defaced by the truculent works of men. The rich and reviving green that carpeted the ground, now presents to the view an ensanguined plain, and the smiling flowers, emblems of innocence and peace, bear no longer in their calice the pearly moisture of the morn, but display the ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... have been a mutiny at all but for Tonkin, who was its sole instigator, as well as the murderer of the unfortunate Captain Williams, who had provoked the turbulent boatswain to the highest pitch of exasperation by his alternations of jovial good-fellowship with truculent arrogance of demeanour. Poor Carter seemed to find it a little difficult to make up his mind how to deal with the matter, as he confessed to me somewhat later that same evening; but I pointed out to him that, the chief offender having been ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... Father to be Guardians over him; but one Bieren (who writes himself Biron, and "Duke of Courland,' being Czarina's Quasi-Husband these many years) to be Guardian, as it were, over both them and him. Such had been the truculent insatiable Bieren's demand on his Czarina. 'You are running on your destruction,' said she, with tears; but complied, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... yard, and days of strain followed. The situation developed into a quarrel between the truculent chief and Edem, and every man went armed, women crept about in fear, scouts arrived hourly with the latest tidings. Her life was a ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... on a high stool, holding in one hand a half-eaten sausage, in the other an extraordinarily large and powerful-looking revolver. At the sight of Sam he laid down both engines of destruction and beamed. He was not a particularly successful beamer, being hampered by a cast in one eye which gave him a truculent and sinister look; but those who knew him knew that he had a heart of gold and were not intimidated by his repellent face. Between Sam and himself there had always existed terms of great cordiality, starting from the time when the former ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... things being so, I can pity and forgive a great deal of what appears to be, and is, so opposite to the true Christian temper, on account of its origin and cause. Especially as these very persons, who are so impetuous, and truculent almost, as partizans and advocates, are, as private Christians, examples perhaps of extraordinary virtue. We certainly know this to be the case with Macer. An apostle was never more conscientious nor more pure. Yet would he, had ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... and MacNab—who was actually paying the passage out of his hoarded funds, and sternly resolved to join the Cameronians. The party were figuratively swamped by the multitude of Teutons, who had swarmed on board, already looking truculent, arrogant and victorious—drinking and toasting one another noisily in vast libations at the bar. On the wharf an immense gathering of natives assembled to speed numbers of kind and generous patrons, who (with an eye to the future) had distributed a considerable amount ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... so preposterous a system as that of electing a judiciary by popular party vote, Englishmen have generally confined themselves to a complimentary expression of surprise that the results are not worse than they are. Surely, while being as truculent as they please in their attitude towards the hereditary principle, it would be well if Americans would similarly endeavour to dissociate their detestation of that principle from their feelings for the ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... but the proprietor of the dance-hall, scenting law, struck the half-breed with the butt of another, and he rolled over, and was harmless for some minutes. Then he got on his legs, and was led out of the entertainment, which resumed more gayly than ever. Feet shuffled, the fiddle whined, and truculent treble laughter sounded through the canvas walls as Toussaint walked between Cutler and the saloon-man to jail. He was duly indicted, and upon the scout's deposition committed to trial for the murder of Loomis and Kelley. Cutler, hoping still to be wagon-master, wrote ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... suddenly electrified by Ro-land's matter. "Here!" he interposed. "Whajuh mean by that?" And relinquishing his grasp on the door, he reeled between the two and thrust his face close to Roland's. "Who're you talkin' to, an'way?" he demanded, truculent. ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... But even more truculent methods are represented by the story-tellers as resorted to free the afflicted household. Nothing short of fire is often deemed sufficient for the purpose. There were various methods of applying it. Sometimes we are told of a shovel being made ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... situation, but quite terribly alive to the act of treachery and violence which had brought that situation about. And I must say that Levy looked no less alive to his own enormity; he quailed in his bonds with a guilty fearfulness strange to witness in so truculent a brute; and it was with something near a quaver that his ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... the direction indicated, and was surprised at the appearance of the redoubtable Fetters, who walked over and took his seat at the table with the judge and the lawyers. He had expected to meet a tall, long-haired, red-faced, truculent individual, in a slouch hat and a frock coat, with a loud voice and a dictatorial manner, the typical Southerner of melodrama. He saw a keen-eyed, hard-faced small man, slightly gray, clean-shaven, wearing ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... into the strongly-sweeping current of secessionism. The city of St. Louis remained firm a while, and returned Benton twice to the House; but his energies were exhausted now in defensive war; and the truculent and triumphant slave power dominating, the State at last succeeded, through the coercion of commercial interests, in defeating him even in the citadel of loyalty. He tried once more to breast the tide that had borne down his fortunes. He became a candidate for governor ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... then brought him recognition of Ruiz Rios's voice; a sharp answer might have been from Escobar. He stopped and considered. If these men quarreled, how would it affect him? Quarrel they would, soon or late, he knew. For both were truculent and in the looks he had seen pass between them there was no friendship. Two rebellious spirits held in check by the will of Zoraida Castelmar. ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... afternoon and part of the evening. As to what we learned, that may be dismissed in a few words: but the news was more satisfactory than it had been for a long time. The half-breeds were comparatively quiet, presumably because of a warning hint from headquarters. And the truculent officials of the rival company had taken no steps to call our people to account for the attack on Lagarde's store, nor did they appear to have any intention of demanding the person of Captain Rudstone. Doubtless they thought it best to let sleeping dogs lie. Of course this altered situation ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... atrocity, blood and massacre, to the restoration of barbarism. They may agitate and perplex the world for a time. They may excite to desperate attempts and particular acts of cruelty and horror, but these will always be suppressed or avenged at the expense of the objects of their truculent philanthropy. But short of this, they can hardly be aware of the extent of the mischief they perpetrate. As I have said, their opinions, by means to us inscrutable, do very generally reach our slave population. What human being, if unfavorably distinguished by outward ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... Franciscan friars composed of Father Ascelin and three companions. It was in the year 1246 that these papal envoys set out, armed with full powers from the head of the Church, but sadly deficient in the worldly wisdom necessary to deal with such truculent infidels as those whom they had been sent ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... one loves him all the more for it, but it was exasperating too, with such tremendous issues at stake in the world of living thought, to see him pounding away at those truculent old Red Indians in their barbarian original tongue. Yet I would not for much forget those days when we saw him escaping utterly from all worries and troubles and perfectly happy before a blackboard covered with ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... profile, when he declares "the Nose have it." But there is a loftiness about CALDWELL's tone, a subdued fire in his manner when he is discussing the difference between a rate of ten shillings and one of twelve, a withering indignation for all that is false or truculent (in short, anything connected with the office of Lord-Advocate) that strangely moves the listener. The very mystery of his ordinary bearing weaves a spell of enchantment around him. For days and weeks he will sit silent, watchful, with his eye on the paralysed Scotch Law Officers. Then, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 14, 1892 • Various
... even frightened, but among the men there was an uplifting, as though in preparation or anticipation of the miracle. All eyes were turned upon the two central figures. The priest realized the crucial moment, felt his power tottering, opened his mouth in denunciation, but fled backward before the truculent advance, upraised fist, and flashing eyes, of Mackenzie. He sneered ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... to her with his red-rimmed, fiery eyes, his Viking mustaches that had turned truculent, his whole aspect of animosity at this last collapse of hope. And of a sudden she divined the true basis of those hopes of his—the longing for at least some vicarious creation, the desire to escape, in part, his own sense of defeat by aiding, and, therefore, ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... the negro enter the climate of Hayti, and feel that more truculent and desolating one of the Spanish temper, than he began to revolt, to take to the mountains, to defend his life, to organize leagues with Caribs and other natives. The colonists were often slain in conflicts with them. The first ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... new-comer had evidently walked from Stowmarket. He had the appearance of a gentleman, soiled and a trifle truculent, perhaps, but a man of birth and ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... kindness he had received from the grandfather of his prisoner, was at first disposed to spare him, but afterward consulted with his higher officials, some of whom advocated a policy of clemency, while others, including Mir Jafar's son, Miran, a truculent youth, not unlike Suraj ud Daulah in disposition, urged that the only security against a fresh revolution lay in the death of the prisoner. The latter accordingly was made over to Miran, by whose orders he was brutally murdered in the course of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... loose from school and giving his heart a holiday—a simple, tender heart, preserved beneath the science of the law like a grape in sawdust. Now he would smile as I sang Jeanne's praises; now he would sit and listen to my objections with a truculent air, tightening his lips till they broke forth in vehement denial. "What! You dare to say! Young man, what are you afraid of?" His overflowing kindness discharged itself in the sincerest ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... nearer, whatever Books are needed;'" and labor faithfully at this immortal Production. Yes, day by day, to see growing, by the cunning of one's own right hand, such perennial Solomon's-Temple of a SIECLE DE LOUIS QUATORZE:—which of your Kings, or truculent, Tiglath-Pilesers, could do that? To poor me, even in the Potsdam tempests, it is possible: what ugliest day is not beautiful that sees a stone or two added there!—Daily Voltaire sees himself at work on his SIECLE, on those fine terms; trowel in one hand, weapon of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle |
