"Bluffness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one of Nature's touchers. This is the age of the specialist, Bertie's speciality was borrowing money. He was a man of almost eerie versatility in this direction. Time could not wither nor custom stale his infinite variety. He could borrow with a breezy bluffness which made the thing practically a hold-up. And anon, when his victim had steeled himself against this method, he could extract another five-pound note from his little hoard with the delicacy of one playing spillikins. Mr Blatherwick had been a gold-mine to him ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... prices, governing the men with so iron a sway, and arranging everything so entirely according to his own fancy, that he is a complete sovereign in his own small way—the tyrant of Tampico. He has in his weather-beaten face such a mixture of bluffness and slyness, with his gigantic person, and abrupt, half-savage manners, that, altogether, I conceive him to be a character who might have been worthy the attention of Walter Scott, had he chanced to encounter him. Old and repulsive as he is, he has lately married a pretty young girl—a ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... not touched him with its paralyzing finger: his vigorous frame, elastic step, and animated glance gave promise of twenty years more of energetic life. His sturdy figure, healthy face, and a slight bluffness of manner reminded one more of his original profession than of the life and manners of a man of letters. He looked like a man who had lived much in the open air,—upon whom the rain had fallen, and against whom the wind had blown. His conversation was hearty, spontaneous, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... Stuarts, when the king's favour ceased to be the means of making one's fortune, a courtly education was no longer profitable. High offices under the Georges were as often as not filled by unpolished Englishmen extolled for their native flavour of bluntness and bluffness. Foreign graces were a superfluous ornament, more or less ridiculous. The majority of Englishmen were wont to prize, as Sam Johnson did, "their rustic grandeur and their surly grace," and to ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard |
