"Abruptness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... answer to her look of surprise, I explained that I had begun to speak of Beasley at Mrs. Apperthwaite's, and described the abruptness with which Dowden had changed ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... does it all mean?" asked the Colonel, advancing toward the minister, and showing his irritation by his frown, his flush, and the abruptness of his ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... of a rifle shot split the air with significant abruptness. The sound banished the last of her half-angry causing. The moment had come. She raised herself up for no other ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... caprice, just now, that it is well for your wife's cousin to make the most of her opportunities while they last. She is very popular now; but next season—" Seeing that Bradley remained silent, she did not finish the sentence, but said with her usual abruptness, "Do you know a Miss Araminta ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... next, the strong servant and fore runner (verses 4-8). The abruptness with which the curtain is drawn, and the gaunt figure of the desert-loving ascetic shown us, is very striking. It is like the way in which Elijah, his prototype, leaps, as it were, full-armed, into the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... brisk yet graceful abruptness, to the two ladies still seated before the low fire. With a charming outburst of enthusiasm she ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... blunder; and, as it was not his business at that moment to vindicate the British constitution, but to serve Leonard Fairfield, he abandoned the cause of the aristocracy with the most poltroon and scandalous abruptness. Catching at the arm which Mr. Avenel had withdrawn from him, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... horseman shriking sore and rashing wildly home,— A mediaeval horseman with ye usual flecks of foame; And he did brast into ye ring, wherein his horse did drop, Upon ye which ye rider did with like abruptness stop, And with fatigue and fearfulness continued in a swound Ye space of half an hour or more before a leech was founde. "Now tell me straight," quod Launcelot, "what varlet knyght you be, Ere that I chine you with my sworde and cleave your harte in three!" ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... pressed Baedeker to her bosom, and sat down, with some abruptness. "I shall have to stop here," she panted, "all the rest of my life, and have my meals and my night things sent up. I'm very sorry. But I'm certain I shall never ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... silent and awe-stricken beneath the shadows of the mighty cliffs, which, in their tremendous height and abruptness, seemed to overhang at the top, the Indians gazing intently, as if they, too, were impressed with the strange, awe-inspiring grandeur that shut them in, one of them at length broke the silence by saying, "This must be a good place for woodchucks; ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... little fluttering smile about her lips and a curious intelligence in her eyes. She admitted that she was tired, but had not been ill, and her father told me that long train journeys produced the same effect on her as a sea journey. She spoke with a pretty abruptness, and went away suddenly, I thought for good, but she returned half an hour afterwards looking a little faint, I thought, green about the mouth, and smiling less frequently. One cannot remember everything, and I have forgotten at what station these people got out; they bade me a kindly farewell, ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... of physical endurance, and he was only too glad of relief for his smarting skin and aching muscles. Fishing was a miserable business, and he wanted no part of it; on that he was fully decided. But even if a job is unpleasant, a man would rather resign than be discharged. Jim's abruptness hurt his pride; ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... have changed somewhat," Lynde broke in. "Dr. Pendegrast, I am in a very strange position here. It is imperative you should be perfectly frank with me. You will have to overlook my abruptness. Mr. Denham may return any instant, and what I have to say cannot be said in his presence. I know that Miss Denham has been under your charge as a patient. I want to know more ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... falling off. Though always promptly on hand at the serving out of rations, Mr. O'Rourke did not even make a pretence of working in the garden. He would disappear mysteriously immediately after breakfast, and reappear with supernatural abruptness at dinner. Nobody knew what he did with himself in the interval, until one day he was observed to fall out of an apple-tree near the stable. His retreat discovered, he took to the wharves and the alleys in the distant part of the town. ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... immediately verified by the appearance of two riders. A moment later Thorne and California John dismounted at the hitching rail, some distance removed among the azaleas, and came up afoot. The younger man had dropped all his dry, official precision, his incisive abruptness, his reticence. Clad in the high, laced cruisers, the khaki and gray flannel, the broad, felt hat and gay neckerchief of what might be called the professional class of out-of-door man, his face glowing with health and enthusiasm, he seemed a ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... known for many weeks, and for Randal she was indeed tenderly grieved; but the other man, with his abruptness, his humour, and his lurking intensity, she had first seen the day before yesterday; and although she knew nothing of Mr. Richard Bellamy's opinion of herself, and admitted in regard to her own future no more than that she found him interesting, she was too well aware to deny, even to herself, that ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... minutes longer the conversation moved on at this desultory pace, and then Mr. Ramy, who had been obviously nerving himself for the difficult act of departure, took his leave with an abruptness which would have startled anyone used to the subtler gradations of intercourse. But to Ann Eliza and her sister there was nothing surprising in his abrupt retreat. The long-drawn agonies of preparing to leave, and the subsequent dumb plunge ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... face, and, finally, the large thumb in the little book of ——, Monsieur the Preceptor, who had years ago exchanged his old position for a parochial cure. He strode up to the gaoler (whose head came a little above the priest's elbow), and, drawing him aside, asked, with his old abruptness, "Who is this?" ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... and lazy breakfast next morning, Roger ascended to his father's room. He found the old man lying tranquil if weak, his temperature fallen to normal with that curious abruptness characteristic of typhoid. The nurse, very fresh in a clean apron and cap, was putting the room to rights. She smiled at Roger, who was no longer a stranger, for the two had had a long talk over their coffee the evening before, and later, with Miss Clifford, ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... recalled his eyes from the waste into which they had been staring, and fell back a step or so under the abruptness, and perhaps the chance ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... believe, if youth once depart from the right way, render them more vicious characters than common. This arises from the abruptness or suddenness of transition. For having been shut up within narrow boundaries for a part of their lives, they go greater lengths, when once let loose, than others, who have not been ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... aspect and organization, else how could it be that, proceeding from the same stock, all shades of complexion in the skin, and variety in the form of the skull, should have arisen? Experience assures us that these are changes assumed only by slow degrees, and not with abruptness; they come as a cumulative effect. They plainly enforce the doctrine that national type is not to be regarded as a definite or final thing, a seeming immobility in this particular being due to the attainment of a correspondence ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... life too easy. We'll jus' nacherally bust him all to pieces; we'll learn him the big lesson of life; we'll make a man out'n him yet. An' when that's done, Guy Little, when that time comes— Go send Blenham here," he broke off with sharp abruptness. ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... made an inexplicable noise like an animal; in his shadowed face the eyes were shining queerly. A new and shrewd thought exploded silently in the other's mind. Was there another meaning in Saradine's blend of brilliancy and abruptness? Was the prince—Was he perfectly sane? He was repeating, "The wrong person—the wrong person," many more times than was natural in ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... He turned with abruptness and started back the way they had come. But impulsively Billie ran to him, calling to him to stop. Yet when he did stop and turned to look at her she had not the slightest idea in the world what she had intended to say—if indeed ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... abruptness in the transition. Every day had contributed its little toward widening the gap. There was no coolness, no consciousness of separation; simply the slow formation of the habit of complete ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... these mid-oceanic islands to stand with slopes varying from the perpendicular to a smaller extent than if they were sub-aerial; and it is on this account that we find them rising with such extraordinary abruptness from the ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... talking. There was no end to his questions as to what had passed at Wadi Halfa during the last eight weeks, no limit to his enthusiasm over the journey from which he had just returned. Finally, however, he stopped with a remarkable abruptness, and said, with some suspicion, ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... unceremonious abruptness and singularity of the question into a spontaneous tribute paid to her costly ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... the gaping hole opposite me. At first I could make out nothing—nothing but jagged walls and roof, and empty darkness; then there suddenly appeared in the very innermost recesses of the cave a faint glow of crimson light which grew and grew, until with startling abruptness it resolved itself into two huge eyes, red and menacing. The sight was so unexpected, and, by reason of its intense malignity, so appalling, that I was simply dumbfounded. I could do nothing but stare ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... swiftly in the drooping form of the girl. Her muscles tensed. She stood suddenly erect, in the vigor of her youth again. Her face lost in the same second its bleakness of pallor. The eyes opened widely, with startling abruptness, and looked straight into those of the man who ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... the soft abruptness of one who has approached it noiselessly by design. Dredlinton stood upon the threshold, blinking a little as he gazed into the room. He recognized Wingate with a start ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... articulation, or is cut short by a forcible aspiration. Supposing these Tenses to be used by a speaker in reply to a command or a request; by their very structure, the former expresses the softness of compliance; and the latter, the abruptness of a refusal. If a command or a request be expressed by such verbs as these, tog sin, gabh sin, ith sin, the compliant answer is expressed by togaidh, gabhaidh, ithidh; the refusal, by the cha tog, cha ghabh, cha n-ith. May not this peculiar ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... day. To these were added, in this representation of them by these French appreciators of their attractions, a mode of speech in which the most ludicrous French, in the most barbarous accent, was uttered in alternate bursts of loud abruptness and languishing drawl. Sudden, grotesque playfulness was succeeded by equally sudden and grotesque bashfulness; now an eager intrepidity of wild enthusiasm, defying all decorum, and then a sour, severe reserve, full of angry and terrified suspicion of imaginary improprieties. ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... rendered it contrary to the laws of romantic chivalry (which you reverence so much) for me to introduce to you my friend Mr. Pepler, who is a very nice man indeed though a social idealist, and who has, I believe, something of a practical sort to ask of you. Please excuse abruptness in this letter of introduction; we are moving into the country and every piece of furniture I begin to write at is taken away and ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... action in which the palm is shewn, by raising it to lay it on the book, in judicial attestations. Well, says he, if any man in Italy have a fairer table, that doth offer to swear upon a book——Here he stops with an abruptness very common, and ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... refined graceful dignity that remained to her from the leading station she had occupied. Her gracious respect towards her clergyman was a contrast as much to the deferential coquetry of his admirers as to the abruptness of his foe, and her indifference to parish details had even its charm in a world of fussiness; he did not know himself how far a wish of hers would have led him, and she was the last person to guess. ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of anticipation that surged and swelled within me, so that I was utterly unable to sit still, for sheer joy; and my soul began as it were to dance in such excitement, that I could hardly refrain from shouting, resembling one intoxicated by the abruptness of a sudden change from certain death to the very apex of life's sweetness. And I said to myself: Sunset! So, then, beyond a doubt, she has either forgiven me, or is willing to forgive. And who knows? For if she has forgiven once, she may forgive again: when again, it may be, she ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... mention about the inclination of the strata being greater round the circumference than in the middle of the island; do you suppose the elevation has had the form of a flat dome? I remember in the Cordillera being OFTEN struck with the greater abruptness of the strata in the LOW EXTREME outermost ranges, compared with the great mass of inner mountains. I dare say you will have thought of measuring exactly the width of any dikes at the top and bottom of any great cliff (which ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... had bathed his wounds, made much of him, idealised him. She had done what any uneducated street woman would have done for "her man." And now she had suddenly come to feel as if there had always been an emptiness in her life, as if Fritz never had, never could fill it. The abruptness of the onset of this new feeling confused her. She did not know that a woman could be subject to a change of this kind. She did not understand it, realise what it portended, what would result from it. But she felt that, for the moment, at any rate, she could not get up any ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... though still with the inimitable deference of manner which I have called 'chivalrous,' yet not without a certain abruptness of tone which, as addressed to the weaker sex, Sir Philip Sydney might have termed 'rustic,' "Why do you never come to see us?" While I was deliberating on the right answer to give to this unlooked-for question, Taee said quickly and sternly, ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... or difficulty, its advance or retrocession, its home coming or its wandering, its hesitation or its surety, its conflicts and its contrasts, its force or its weakness, its swiftness or slowness, its abruptness or smoothness, its excitement or repose, its success or failure, its seriousness or play. Then, in addition, as we shall see, all modes of emotion that are congruous with this abstract form may by association be poured into its mold, so that ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... to the best of my ability. He listened attentively enough, but thereafter he had not another word for me, and presently he went into the next car. I took his manner to be the Western abruptness that I had heard of, and presently forgot him in the scenery along the line. At Albuquerque I got off for a trip to a lunch-counter, and happened to take a ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... of the rocking-chairs. Dolly sank into the other. By keeping the same rhythm, there was space for both to swing at the same time. Dolly swayed back and forth three times, and then burst into tears. "He has left me, Auntie; Goosie is gone; ooh-ooh!" The aunt's chair ceased rocking with an abruptness that made their knees bump. Dolly's chair stopped; she looked at her aunt in astonishment. Aunt Hester was sitting up very straight. "Do you mean to say," she began, and then paused as though unable to believe the ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... to the superior the deadly nature of the animal, and my fear that he would have put his handkerchief in the pocket of his robe before I had time to prevent him, and begged him to excuse my seeming abruptness. ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... is a thing inbred in them. They are quite unconscious of it. It is as natural to them as breathing. And, while they talk on, they really do believe that they are a quick, businesslike people, by whom things are "put through" with an almost brutal abruptness. This notion of theirs is rather confusing ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... moon was sinking rapidly. The night had come, already. A minute it seemed, and the moon fell those remaining fathoms of dark sky. Another minute, or so, and the Eastward sky glowed with the coming dawn. The sun leapt upon me with a frightening abruptness, and soared ever more swiftly toward the zenith. Then, suddenly, a fresh thing came to my sight. A black thundercloud rushed up out of the South, and seemed to leap all the arc of the sky, in a single instant. As it came, I saw ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... authority that seemed to prelude something more epoch-making than an assent to one of Frederica's industrious platitudes; he snuffled and fidgeted, eating scarcely at all, and repelling the reverential assiduities of the servants with shattering abruptness. ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... To the great delight of Mrs. Hill and Conrad, Mrs. Hamilton scarcely addressed a word to Ben at the supper table. When she did speak, it was with an abruptness and coldness quite unusual for the warm-hearted woman. Ben looked depressed, fixed his eyes on his plate, and took very little part in the conversation. Mrs. Hill and Conrad, on the other hand, seemed in very good spirits. ...
— The Store Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... endurance than Marian had ever dared to put before him. She was more pleased than she had been for a long time, when as they were walking together in the plantations, after evening service, he said with some abruptness and yet with some hesitation, "Marian, didn't you once read something with Gerald in ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... gulf, iridescent under a zenith sun and framed as far as the eye could reach with a slant of parched beach; the sides of the vast concavity were formed by the verdant mat of jungled slopes that rose with ever increasing abruptness to ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... terminus a quo of this flight, and the terminus ad quem, are equally magnificent; the mightiest of Christian thrones being the one, the mightiest of Pagan the other. And the grandeur of these two terminal objects, is harmoniously supported by the romantic circumstances of the flight. In the abruptness of its commencement, and the fierce velocity of its execution, we read an expression of the wild barbaric character of the agents. In the unity of purpose connecting this myriad of wills, and in the blind but unerring aim at a mark so remote, there is something which recalls ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... tears rising, and she left Miss Betty with an abruptness that made her ashamed of herself as she recalled it. After the exertion of climbing the hill she stopped to rest on the rustic seat just inside her own gate. "I wonder," she asked herself, "if there is anything much harder to ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... listened for hours to this most pertinacious pedlar (I wonder whether he is dead or has made a fortune), while sitting on the rail of the old Duke of S- (she's dead, poor thing! a violent death on the coast of New Zealand), fascinated by the monotony, the regularity, the abruptness of the recurring cry, and so exasperated at the absurd spell, that I wished the fellow would choke himself to death with a mouthful of ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... smiles or tears: Amelia's love, by Kotzebue, is indelicately blunt, and yet void of mirth or sadness: I have endeavoured to attach the attention and sympathy of the audience by whimsical insinuations, rather than coarse abruptness—the same woman, I conceive, whom the author drew, with the self-same sentiments, but with manners adapted to the English rather than the German taste; and if the favour in which this character is held by the audience, together with every ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... separated the final words brought a sinking sensation at the pit of his stomach, and the discomfort of a fencer, dueling in the dark—a swordsman who recognizes that his cleverness is outmatched. His question came with a staccato abruptness. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... and abruptness of Henchard increased Farfrae's suspicion that this was a ruse to decoy him on to the next wood, where might be effectually compassed what, from policy or want of nerve, Henchard had failed to do earlier in the day. ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... laden with bales of goods, and pushed along at a reckless rate of speed by mahogany-complexioned men; dashing coaches, impelled by drivers hallooing when close upon you with distracting loudness and abruptness; mules coming onward with the blundering obtuseness peculiar to their tribe, or with their heads fastened to doorways, and their flanks extending across the street, affording just space enough for the passenger to slide behind their heels; a busy, jostling crowd of people hurrying to and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... clearness that petrified my very soul, the banging and clanging of sword scabbards, and the panting and gasping of men, sore pressed in a wild and desperate race. And then the meaning of it all came to me with hideous abruptness—it was a case of pursued and pursuing—the race was for—LIFE. Outside my door the fugitive halted, and from the noise he made in trying to draw his breath, I knew he was dead beat. His antagonist, however, gave him but scant time for recovery. Bounding at him with prodigious leaps, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... his absurd self-consciousness he was glad that her last suggestion had relieved him of a sense of reckless compliance. He assented eagerly, when with a wave of her hand, a flash of her white teeth, and the same abruptness she had shown at their last parting, she caught Lucy by the arm and darted away in a romping race to her dwelling. Jarman started after her. He had not wanted to go to her father's house particularly, but why was SHE evidently ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... The abruptness of this announcement turned madame giddy. "How did you know? Mine did not leave half an hour ago; there isn't another French cook within five miles; it ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... squire, "uncommonly lucky as usual. Now, excuse my abruptness in changing the subject—I want to consult you upon ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... mists suddenly cleared like the tearing away of a mighty curtain, and with startling abruptness Powell found himself again in a solid world of material things. For a moment as he gazed dazedly about him he thought that the roseate glow of the projector must still be playing tricks with his eyesight, for the landscape around him was completely ...
— Devil Crystals of Arret • Hal K. Wells
... Naturally the country is fat. The trees are thick and round—a world of leaves; the hills are round; the forms are all blunt; and the grass is so deep as to have almost the effect of snow in smoothing off all points and curving away all abruptness. England is almost as blunt as a machine-made moulding or a piece of Early-Victorian cast-iron work. And on all this we have, of set purpose, improved by our invention of the country park. There all is curves and masses. A little more is ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... unhappy protegee, and that their union had been duly accredited; but that I had lost no opportunity of attempting to undermine his happiness, and to maintain an unwholesome influence over her. That I had at last left the place myself, with a most uncivil abruptness; during the interval of absence my occupations were believed to have been of the most dubious character: it was more than suspected, indeed, that I had penetrated to places, the very name of which could hardly be mentioned without shame and consternation. That my associates had been persons ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... aware of it, as was her elder sister, Lady Georgina, who spent her silent life in alternately admiring and despising the younger. Lady Georgina was short, thin, and nearly white-haired. She had a deep voice, which she used with a harsh abruptness, startling to the newcomer. But she used it very little. Cynthia's friends, were used to see her sitting absolutely silent behind the tea-urn at breakfast or tea, filling the cups while Cynthia handed them and Cynthia talked; and they ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... up acquaintance in an irregular way, to be sure; but Cleer hadn't happened to be close by when her father uttered those strange words to his wife, "It was he who did it; it was he who killed our boy"; nor did she notice particularly the marked abruptness of Tyrrel's departure on that unfortunate occasion. So she had no such objection to meeting the two young men as Trevennack himself not unnaturally displayed; she regarded his evident avoidance of Walter Tyrrel as merely one of "Papa's fancies." ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... clouds rose ponderously upon the hilltops, blacking out the twilight with an abruptness which must have held deep significance for men less occupied. But the dominant overcast of their minds was the coming of the sheriff. For many of them it was far more ominous ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... suitable, if we had not had that little joke about the piano snobile between us. As it was, she was not wholly displeased. These Kings Port old ladies grew, I suspect, very slowly and guardedly accustomed to any outsider; they allowed themselves very seldom to suffer any form of abruptness from him, or from any one, for that matter. But, once they were reassured as to him, then they might sometimes allow the privileged person certain departures from their own rule of deportment, because his conventions ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... head between his knees, evidently in a brown study. Bessie was sorry to disturb him, but it was too late to draw back, for Mac had already seen her, and had roused his master by his uneasy efforts to get free, and Mr. Sefton rose, with the awkward abruptness that seemed natural to him, and ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... too, and in the bureaucracy, he had no inconsiderable strength; for Lumley never contracted the habits of personal abruptness and discourtesy common to men in power who wish to keep applicants aloof. He was bland and conciliating to all men of ranks; his intellect and self-complacency raised him far above the petty jealousies that great ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... remembering the manners due one lady from another. "But I thought it must be. I expect," she added, with loud, inconsequent laughter, "there's not many in Canaan ain't heard you've come back." She paused, laughed again, nervously, and again, less loudly, to take off the edge of her abruptness: gradually tittering herself down to a pause, to fill which she put forth: "Right nice ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... and spirally-terminating rock, in particular, kept constantly in view before us, on the right; of which the base and centre were wholly feathered with fir. It rose with an extraordinary degree of abruptness, and seemed to be twice as high as the spire of Strasbourg cathedral. To the left, ran sparkling rivulets, as branches of the three lakes just mentioned. An endless variety of picturesque beauty—of trees, rocks, greenswards, wooded heights, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... any such account from himself might just steel her heart against any appeal, and make her rest satisfied with what another was doing for the man whom she had vowed to love in sickness as well as in health. He knew that his scrap of a letter must prove startling by its abruptness; but he had no wish that it should be otherwise. These startling words might rouse her to a sense of her duty; if they did not, he ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... to the naming of Malcolm, for which there has been no preparation, is extremely sudden; and the matter, considering its importance, is disposed of very briefly. But the abruptness and brevity of the sentence in which Duncan invites himself to Macbeth's castle are still more striking. For not a word has yet been said on the subject; nor is it possible to suppose that Duncan had conveyed his intention ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... the fiend; and I thought that after a while he endeavoured to drag Aurore from me. A struggle followed, and then the scene ended with confused abruptness. ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... would tell me what you really mean by that Greek idea of yours," he said with the abruptness of confusion. ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... — N. instantaneity, instantaneousness, immediacy; suddenness, abruptness. moment, instant, second, minute; twinkling, trice, flash, breath, crack, jiffy, coup, burst, flash of lightning, stroke of time. epoch, time; time of day, time of night; hour, minute; very minute &c, very time, very hour; present time, right time, true ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... are in this/Reliev'd, but not betray'd] [W: Bereav'd, but] I do not think the emendation necessary, since the sense is not made better by it, and the abruptness in Cleopatra's answer is more forcible in the ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... the purchase had not been an easy matter. Abroad, to her amazement, money had its mighty value, but only as a superstructure. There must be firmer stuff for the foundation—family. Her family was traced too easily—for the tracing was too brief. It ended with abruptness which was startling, two generations back, in a far western mining camp. Beyond that all the cutest experts in false genealogies had failed ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... latitude. On every level space are seen the signs of culture and human habitation, fields green with the early grain, or yellow with the harvest. The roads now wind through forests of constant shade, even under the burning sun of the equator; now they turn with gentle windings, or with steep abruptness, while below spread bright and beautiful lands, and interesting the more because associated with the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... 273. Notice the abruptness with which the leper is here introduced, just as before at the beginning of the story. The vision of "a sunnier clime" is quickly swept away. The shock of surprise now has a very different ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... drink, and for this spring they started a little while before sundown, Henry carrying his rifle on his shoulder, and his heart fluttering. He felt his years increase suddenly and his figure expand with equal abruptness. He had become a man and he was going forth to slay big game. Yet despite his new manhood the blood would run to his head and he felt his nerves trembling. He grasped his precious rifle more firmly and stole a look out of ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... produced by the working of the democratic spirit within the aristocratic constitution of society and taste may without exaggeration be described as prodigious. At first sight, indeed, there seems to be a certain abruptness in the transition from the highly organized society represented in Boswell's "Life of Johnson," to the philosophical retirement of Wordsworth and Coleridge. It is only when we look beneath the surface that we see the old traditions still upheld by ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... for its abruptness, and plunging into the subject all at once[1184]. But such arts as these have no merit, unless when they are original. We admire them only once; and this abruptness has nothing new in it. We have had it often before. Nay, we have it in the old ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... exhibit their full stature, their commanding puissance, with such majesty as in the gates of Italy; and of all those gates I think there is none to compare with Maloja, none certainly to rival it in abruptness of initiation into the Italian secret. Below Vico Soprano we pass already into the violets and blues of Titian's landscape. Then come the purple boulders among chestnut trees; then the double dolomite-like peak of Pitz Badin ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... came suddenly the railway and the steamship, the former opening with extraordinary abruptness a series of vast through-routes for trade, the latter enormously increasing the security and economy of the traffic on the old water routes. For a time neither of these inventions was applied to the needs of intra-urban transit at all. For a time they were purely ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... made d'Alcacer start by its abruptness which revealed the woman's possession of that man's mind. "She is with Don Martin, who is better but feels very weak. If we are to be given up, he will have to be carried out to his fate. I can depict to myself the scene. Don Martin carried shoulder high surrounded by those ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... similar hymn. It is probable that the first hymn (Te Deum ... Paraclitum Spiritum), lines 1 to 13 of Te Deum are older than the second part, which was written probably as a sequel to the early hymn. The rhythm of the hymn is very beautiful, being free from abruptness and monotony. Students of poetry may note that seven lines have the exact hexameter ending, if scanned accentually, as voce proclamant; Deus sabbaoth, etc. Seven have two dactyls, as laudabilis numerus, laudat exercitus; one ends with ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... on his glasses and looked at the photograph for some time. Yes, he said, he did remember that he had given the keys of a cottage in October, 1894, to a man of Holmes' appearance, and he recollected the man the more distinctly for the uncivil abruptness with which he had asked for the keys; "I felt," he said, "he should have had more ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... idealisation of our misery. The excitement increased rather than diminished as we entered the village. Our motley escort gesticulated, ran to and fro, and shouted unintelligible orders in the most frantic manner; heads appeared and disappeared with startling kaleidoscopic abruptness at the windows of the houses; and three hundred dogs contributed to the general confusion by breaking out into an infernal canine peace jubilee which fairly made the air quiver with sound. At last we stopped in front of a large one-story log ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... of her he said a few words to the lawyer in a somewhat different key, and descended from his vehicle. As she came up to them Mr. Dain saluted her with bashful abruptness, and her proud face broke as if by the loosing of a spell into a generous and captivating smile; Mr. Dain blushed, the vision was too much for his composure; he moved his horse forward a yard or two, and then jerked it back again, ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... all that she had got to say, and changed her position as silently as she had occupied it. There was no abruptness of motion, and yet Lord George saw her talking to her husband at the other side of the room, almost while his own words were still sounding in his own ears. Then he watched her for the next few minutes. Certainly, she was very beautiful. There was no room for comparison, they were so ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... too great for them, not even the dizziest conceivable to a young person so subtle. The dizziest seemed indeed attained when, after another moment, she came as near as she was to come to an apology for her abruptness. ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... Madam," he said, "you will excuse the abruptness of my manner in our late interview. I was so little prepared for the communication you had to make, that I was, perhaps, unsuitably discomposed. Will you allow me to ask whether you were requested by any of the parties to communicate to me what ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... my dear," said Miss Rogers, with harsh abruptness, "I am afraid I am living in this house ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... All at once he put on the cynic's cloak, and went to the other extreme. Still in spite of an abrupt and cynical tone he kept much of his old art of elaborate fine speeches, and particularly in his relations with women.[222] Of his abruptness, he tells a most displeasing tale. "One day Rousseau told us with an air of triumph, that as he was coming out of the opera where he had been seeing the first representation of the Village Soothsayer, the Duke of Zweibruecken had approached him with ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... fish making shift to live precariously with other small fish in a pool where big fish swam lazily. If one small fish now and then disappeared with mysterious abruptness, the other small fish would perhaps scurry here and there for a time, but few would leave the pool ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... lighting another match, 'I want to see you again—soon.' He paused, astonished at his own abruptness, and an awkward smile expanded until it crinkled the very pinnacle ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... Adam's own apartment and the door was shut McIver's manner changed with startling abruptness. With all the masterful power of his strong-willed nature he faced his trembling host, and his heavy voice was charged with the ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... her feelings, and she sat down before the machine, which clicked and rattled for several minutes under her stubby fingers. Then the clicking ceased with sudden abruptness, and she prodded the mechanism viciously with a hairpin. As this appeared unavailing she used her forefinger, and when at length the carriage slid along the rod with a clash there was a smear of grimy oil upon her cheek and her somewhat tilted nose. The machine, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... he asked her questions and took no more notice of her answers than if she had been a born fool. That might have been his north-country manners and probably he couldn't help them. But there was no necessity that Ally could see for his brutal abruptness, and the callous and repellent look he had when she bared her breast to the stethescope that sent all her poor secrets flying through the long tubes that attached her heart to his abominable ears. Neither (when he had disentangled himself from the stethescope) ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... abruptness," continued Captain Walsingham, "but you see before you a man whose whole happiness is at stake. May I beg a ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... no time, or indeed any opportunity of continuing his unpleasant execution, for the enraged Lord Mayor had seized the wide ends of the sailor's trousers and had dragged him down with such abruptness and goodwill that the over-venturesome son of Neptune, dropping his knife, lay upon the ground volunteering expressions which at least had the merit of showing that his travels must have been indeed varied and extensive to have left him ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton |
