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Downright   /dˈaʊnrˌaɪt/   Listen
Downright

adverb
1.
Thoroughgoing.



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"Downright" Quotes from Famous Books



... especially during the last two years. He seems to have drawn away from all of us, to live altogether too absorbed and self-contained a life for a man who has great ambitions to realize, or who is in downright earnest about ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... me that you were a bold man with women, and I know that at least that part of what you said was untrue, for you are a bashful man, John, you are downright bashful. It is I who have been bold. You were too timid to woo me, and I so longed for ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major

... without a tie of sympathy or common interest to link them each to the other. She was by nature blythe; a thing of sunshine, flowers and music, who craved a very poet for her lover; and by "a poet" I mean not your mere rhymer. He was downright stolid and stupid under his fine exterior; the worst type of Briton, without the saving grace of a Briton's honor. And so she had wearied him, who saw in her no more than a sweet loveliness that had cloyed him presently. ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini

... lot of young nonsense!" His anger was mounting. "You can understand here as well as later that I am not going to answer any of it; and I'll not listen to a great deal more. Sometimes, lately, you have been insulting, but now you are downright pathetic, you are ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... dear Lady Betty,' said Flora, 'may, I conceive, persevere in his suit under very discouraging circumstances. Affection can (now and then) withstand very severe storms of rigour, but not a long polar frost of downright indifference. Don't, even with YOUR attractions, try the experiment upon any lover whose faith you value. Love will subsist on wonderfully little hope, but ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... stockings hanging from her hand, and fell again to listening to Erik. His word made an endless echo in her head.... "Perins a droll species. A sort of indomitable ass. Refuses to succumb to his intelligence. If you think he's in love with your Mary you're a downright imbecile. The man adjusts his passions to his phrases as neatly as a pretty woman pulling on her stockings...." She didn't like Erik to refer to pretty women pulling on their stockings. What an idiot! If Erik wanted to he could go out and help all the pretty women in ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht

... health. To frighten such young men into believing themselves diseased, when in reality they experience nothing but what may occasionally occur in the experiences of any robust, healthy man, is the most detestable, downright quackery. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... came to hand, I was sitting at dinner, after a most noble chase, in the midst of my friends, all men of the right sort, downright hearty good fellows. The cloth was removed, and we had just sung, Bright Phoebus had mounted his chariot of day, when my servant Jonathan came in ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas

... be utterly wrong, absolutely immoral, downright wicked, to forego it," Alice declaimed, with energy. "It would be nothing ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge

... at her. She had fairly fallen in love with this new cousin of hers; her beauty, and gracious ways, her foreign accent, and now her experiences of nuns and convents had come like a revelation to the little English girl in her downright, everyday life. With a comical incongruity, she could compare her in her own mind to nothing but an enchanted princess in some fairy tale; and she stood gazing first at her and then at the glass, where soft wavy brown hair and red and ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... Well, I'm often downright glad grandfather is so fond of his books, and his creatures, and his plants. It does my heart good to see him so happy, sorting them all at home, and so ready to go in search of more, whenever he's ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... her motive in maintaining the alias, though I was certain it was more than a mere whim. How great it was I could not know. Should she persist in it I would help her up to the point of telling Max a downright ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major

... is too strong For early stomachs, to prove wholesome food; I can't help thinking Juvenal was wrong, Although no doubt his real intent was good, For speaking out so plainly in his song, So much indeed as to be downright rude; And then what proper person can be partial To all those nauseous epigrams ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... look of our eyes, our manner of fetching our breath, the little command we have over our words and actions, how little do all these things indicate a sound mind! What can make a worse appearance than Homer's Achilles, or Agamemnon, during the quarrel. And as to Ajax, anger drove him into downright madness, and was the occasion of his death. Courage, therefore, does not want the assistance of anger; it is sufficiently provided, armed, and prepared of itself. We may as well say that drunkenness, or madness, are of service ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... government, not by a private corporation, and guarded by Japanese soldiers. Of the forty mines, the Japanese have worked their way, in only four years, into all but four. Different methods are used. The simplest is, of course, discrimination in the use of the railway for shipping. Downright refusal to furnish cars while competitors who accepted Japanese partners got them, is one method. Another more elaborate method is to send but one car when a large number is asked for, and then when it is too late to use cars, send the whole number asked for or ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey

... exact conditions of her father's will was satisfied by the gossip of the newspapers. And nothing amazed her more than the announcement that Dora Dundas, of all people in the world, was to inherit his millions. Thoughts of Dora sent cold shivers down her back. She knew the downright and straightforward nature so well that she could easily imagine the hot indignation flaming in the girl's breast for any wrong or injustice inflicted ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley

... polygamy. He advised Henry VIII that the right way out of his perplexity was to marry a second wife without repudiating the first. And when the Landgrave Philip asked for leave to do the same thing, Luther gave it on condition that it was denied. He insisted on what he called a downright lie. The great fact which we have to recognise is that with all the intensity of his passion for authority he did more than any single man to make modern History the ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... driven by the extreme cold of the Pleiocene Period to grow a thick fur in his struggle for life. That he grew then a thicker fur, I knew, but that surely does not explain the whole of the Mammoth, with and without a thick fur, before and after the fur. It is really a pity to see for how many of these downright absurdities Darwin is made responsible by the Darwinians. He has clearly shown how in many cases the individual may be modified almost beyond recognition by environment, but the individual must always have been there first. Before ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller

... the arm. Comfort Christopher; that's what he had got to do. Get rid as quickly as possible of that look of agony—yes, it was downright agony—on ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

... in Pieces of this Kind, provided it keeps within the Degrees of Probability; But Mr. de la Bruyere gives us Characters of Men, who are not to be found in Nature; and, out of a false Affectation of the Wonderful, he carries almost every thing to Excess; represents the Irregularities of Life as downright Madness, and by his false Colours ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally

... caught him praying to be forgiven for having neglected his work as a parish priest," (Miss Galindo was making horrible faces, to keep back tears, squeezing up her eyes in a way which would have amused me at any other time, but when she was speaking of Mr. Gray); "when I see a downright good, religious man, I'm apt to think he's got hold of the right clue, and that I can do no better than hold on by the tails of his coat and shut my eyes, if we've got to go over doubtful places on our road ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell

... it downright mean, Judge," he complained, "to bring us fellows out here in the hope of havin' a scrimmage and then send the other side word we're here, so they'll be sure not to come! You'll be runnin' on their ticket ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly

... would not have failed to detect that the Girl took a little less pleasure in her surroundings than she had taken in them before she had made the trip to Monterey. Downright glad, to use her own expression, as she had been on her return to see the boys of the camp and hear their boisterous shouts of welcome when the stage drew up in front of The Polka, she had to acknowledge that her home-coming was not quite what she expected. It ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco

... understand me, sir," said Denham quietly. "I was not speaking in a figurative way, but in plain, downright English. That really is part of an ancient gold-mine, in which the water has collected ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn

... the two girls nearer and nearer together; and Peggy found herself yielding more and more—often against her own judgment—to the fascination of the lawless girl, who on her part seemed curiously drawn to the simple, downright, ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards

... be his province," and that that eager, subtle, and penetrative mind should range as freely as it did over subject after subject of human interest;—illuminating each of them in turn with those rays of true critical insight which, amid many bewildering cross-lights and some few downright ignes fatui, flash forth upon us ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... a kindly star was favoring her. Frances and Edith became friends on the spot; Nurse, who might have proved a problem, took an instant fancy to delicate Win and started on a course of coddling that luckily amused Win quite as much as it satisfied Nurse. Blunt, downright Roger appealed especially to Estelle, who also ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown

... "Look here-that's downright selfish," said his wife, "If we tried to keep you here Henry Brimstead would never forgive us. He talks about you morning, noon and night. Any one would think that you was the Samson ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller

... assumed towards me, and which it is difficult to describe by any other word than "heighty-teighty," and also by dark hints of changes which she hoped (but seemed far from believing) would be for my good, and finally, by downright lamentations and tragic inquiries as to what she had done to be parted from her boy, and "could her chickabiddy have the heart to drive away his loving and faithful nursey," that I learned that it was contemplated to supersede her by some one else, and that if she did not know that I was ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... living the life of a lying scoundrel, he was, he says (p. 192), 'happily restrained by Divine Grace,' so that 'all sense of remorse was not extinguished,' and there was no fall into 'downright infidelity.' At length he picked up Law's Serious Call, which moved him, as later on it moved better men (ante, i. 68). Step by step he got into a way of steady work, and lived henceforth a laborious ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... build a church. I'll go around with a subscription paper myself and raise the money. I feel lost without a church, I honestly do. It's downright heathenish." ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart

... soul I hate her. I do indeed. It isn't love for me now so much as downright malice against Palliser, because he baulked her project before. She is a wicked old woman. Some of us fellows are wicked ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... is rebellion!" exclaimed Schwarzenberg warmly; "that is putting himself in downright opposition to his ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... esteem no sacrifice too great, whether of time, or influence, or money, or talent, which could in any way promote a brother's spiritual welfare. But we are too apt to forget, if not to disbelieve, the solemn declarations of the bible; and forgetfulness to all practical results is as pernicious as downright infidelity. The man who forgets God is as little influenced by his law as the fool, who in his heart says there is no God at all. Now, this forgetfulness paralyzes our energies, damps our zeal, checks our benevolence. We do ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various

... what had happened this morning left an aftermath of bitterness in Mrs. Otway's kind heart. It was only too true that it would sometimes be awkward; in saying so downright Miss Forsyth had been right! She told herself, however, that after a few days they surely would all get accustomed to this strange, unpleasant, new state of things. Why, during the long Napoleonic wars ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... a bad egg like me does no end of a lot of good in the world, although downright criminals do more. If it weren't for people who interfered with others' belongings, the race would get slack and deteriorate. It's having to look after one's property which keeps people alert and up to the mark, and, therefore, those who're the cause of this fitness have their uses. No, my dear ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... too conscientious to tell a Downright lie, though sorely tempted so to do. "But a man may promise indirectly, as well as directly. When I have a thing much at heart, and converse often about it with a person who can grant all I wish, and that person, listens ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... help laughing as she answered, "Upon my word, I believe you know her quite as well as I do.—But, Mr. Knightley, are you perfectly sure that she has absolutely and downright accepted him. I could suppose she might in time—but can she already?—Did not you misunderstand him?—You were both talking of other things; of business, shows of cattle, or new drills—and might not you, in the confusion of so many subjects, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... lines. Again, time can only be measured by space, space by time; they are true universals and contraries; their synthesis is motion, a conception which requires them both and is completed by them. Or again, the philosophical extremes of downright materialism and idealism are each wholly true, yet but half the truth. The insoluble enigmas that either meets in standing alone are kindred to those which puzzled the old philosophers in the sophisms relating to motion, as, ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... moment, and appeared shocked at the idea, which, as he said truly enough, was now presented to him for the first time; but then Mrs Jamieson must remember that he had been living for a long time among savages—all of whom were heathens—some of them, he was afraid, were downright Dissenters. Then, seeing Miss Matty draw near, he hastily changed the conversation, and after a little while, turning to me, he said, "Don't be shocked, prim little Mary, at all my wonderful stories. I consider Mrs Jamieson fair game, and besides ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... objection some people have to strong measures! They see around them, amongst those under their influence, a great deal going on which is downright evil. You call upon them to put a stop to it, and to do all in their power to ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton

... good many of them, conceiving that it might be the civillest way of requiting her for her instructive conversation and the trouble she took in showing me the house. It cost me a pang (not a curmudgeonly, but a gentlemanly one) to offer a downright fee to the lady-like girl who had admitted me; but I swallowed my delicate scruples with some little difficulty, and she digested hers, so far as I could observe, with no difficulty at all. In fact, nobody need fear to hold out half a crown to any person ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... remained in that cold stiff degree of official communication, in which their intercourse was limited to as few expressions as the respective duties of their situation absolutely demanded. Such a state of misunderstanding is, in fact, worse than a downright quarrel;—the latter may be explained or apologized for, or become the subject of mediation; but in such a case as the former, an eclaircissement is as unlikely to take place as a general engagement between two armies which have taken ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... investigation. Well, on my soul and conscience, I do not find the fruit ripe enough, or to speak plainly, I do not consider that you have sufficient grounds to justify your petition for a judicial separation. Let us not forget that the French law is a very downright kind of thing, totally devoid of delicate feeling for nice distinctions. It recognizes only acts, serious, brutal acts, and unfortunately it is these acts we lack. Most assuredly I have been deeply touched while reading the account of the first year of your married life, so very ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet

... the foreigner. First, they cannot do without him if China is to come into line as a great nation among Eastern and Western powers. And then, again, could anyone doubt the sincerity of the desire on the part of the Celestial for closer and downright friendly intercourse if he has had nothing more than mere superficial dealings ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... Falstaff's ragged regiment. Little skill as we boasted in other points of husbandry, every mother's son of us would have served admirably to stick up for a scarecrow. And the worst of the matter was, that the first energetic movement essential to one downright stroke of real labor was sure to put a finish to these poor habiliments. So we gradually flung them all aside, and took to honest homespun and linsey-woolsey, as preferable, on the whole, to the plan recommended, I think, by Virgil,—"Ara nudus; sere nudus, "—which as Silas ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... presently was able to voice his appreciation of Althea's feat (as it was regarded) and to congratulate her upon it. Johnny McComas was not at all displeased. Albert had not been light-handed and graceful, but he developed (under this sudden stress) a sturdy, downright mode of speech which showed sincerity if not dexterity. The square-standing, straight-speaking farm-lad—straight-speaking, if none too ready—was sounding an atavistic note caught from his great-grandfather back in ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller

... promulgating public notices when they are posted on my front. To speak within bounds, I am the chief person of the municipality, and exhibit, moreover, an admirable pattern to my brother-officers by the cool, steady, upright, downright and impartial discharge of my business and the constancy with which I stand to my post. Summer or winter, nobody seeks me in vain, for all day long I am seen at the busiest corner, just above the market, stretching out my arms to rich and poor alike, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... rarely failed in being followed by a downright avowal of open love, which, somehow, what between the route coming, what with waiting for leave from home, etc., never got further than a most tender scene, and exchange of love tokens; and, in fact, such became so often the termination, that ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... while to trace, to earn a living by delighting a Southwark audience nightly with his fine baritone voice, good enough for a ballad in those latitudes, and good enough indeed for something much better if it had been properly exercised under a master. He was not downright dissolute, but his experience with his father, who was weak and silly, had given him a distaste for what he called religion; and he was loose, as might be expected. Still, he was not so loose as to have lost his finer instincts ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford

... the windows, on the footways, and in carriages, amused day after day for several hours in pelting and being pelted with handfuls of mock or real sugar-plums; and this no name or presence, but real downright showers of plaster comfits, from which people guard their eyes with meshes of wire. As sure as a carriage passes under a window or balcony where are acquaintances of theirs, down comes a shower of hail, ineffectually returned ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... laughing all the time—a fact that was afterward recalled with some surprise and no little horror. At the time, the loungers thought his smile was a merry one, but afterward they stoutly maintained there was downright villainy in the leer. His coat was very dusty, proving that he had driven far and swiftly. Three or four of the loungers followed him into the store. He was standing before the counter over which Mr. Lamson ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon

... given her. It contained, she knew, the money to pay for her board and lessons during the next six months,—for the elder Miss Desmond was off to India, Japan and Thibet, and her horror of banks and cheques made her very downright in the matter of money. That in the envelope was all Betty had, and that was Madame Gautier's. But the other part of the advice—to go to Madame Gautier's in the morning? If in the morning, ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit

... Rutherford know them well. They were both of them really excellent people; a minister and his wife; deeply attached to one another; and yet as wretched as wretched could be. How are you going to account for it? It is vastly important just because it is so common. Domestic difficulties rarely arise out of downright wickedness. Husband and wife may be as free from all outward fault as poor Mr. and Mrs. Cardew. Mark Rutherford thinks that Mr. Cardew was chiefly to blame, and his verdict is probably just. A man takes ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham

... a very clever woman, and gives a capital account of the battle between OUR and YOUR weeds. Does it not hurt your Yankee pride that we thrash you so confoundedly? I am sure Mrs. Gray will stick up for your own weeds. Ask her whether they are not more honest, downright good sort of weeds. The book gives an extremely pretty picture of one of your villages; but I see your autumn, though so much more gorgeous than ours, comes on sooner, and that is ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... than a downright unmistakable triumph would convince them. She was a professional in the grain and yet in this adventure she would be under the curse of an amateur's status, a thing she hated as all ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... by its costliness and magnificence. Of course the milliner assured her that every thing she took a fancy to from its rarity, was becoming; and then, oh dear! how the Fairies were amused! for poor Julia looked downright ugly in some of the things she selected, and still went away as self satisfied as ever, on the old grounds that the costume was so expensive that none of her acquaintance could get one like it. This was still her chief comfort! Euphrosyne actually shook her fist at her as she was ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty

... exclaimed to himself, giving way to downright anger. "What do they want with me here? What is all this traffic they are carrying on? Pooh! all women, even pious ones, are up to the same tricks. If Madame" (giving her the name by which her lodgers spoke of her) "wants me out of ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac

... was our friend. Formed on the good old plan, A true and brave and downright honest man He blew no trumpet in the market-place, Nor in the church with hypocritic face Supplied with cant the lack of Christian grace; Loathing pretence, he did with cheerful will What others talked of while their hands were still; And, while "Lord, Lord!" the pious tyrants ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... facts about April are alternate sunshine and showers; but the subtle blending of shadows and lights, of murmurs and movements, in April, gives us not mere shocks of sensation, but unity of joy as does music. Therefore when a poet sees the vision of a girl in April, even a downright materialist is in sympathy with him. But we know that the same individual would be menacingly angry if the law of heredity or a geometrical problem were described as a girl or a rose—or even as a cat or a camel. For these intellectual abstractions have no magical touch for our lute-strings ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore

... spots—imitating. But I thought he was rather a cabbage. A cabbage is a strong, healthy vegetable, honest and vigorous. It's closely in touch with nature, and it doesn't pretend to be what it isn't. You might do well to study a cabbage: but not follow its program. A cabbage has too much to learn. How our downright young moderns will learn things, I'm sure I don't know. Sanine scornfully says "not by repression." Well, I don't think highly of repressions; they're not the best method. Yet it's possible that they might be ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.

... their existence was unknown to the learned men of Europe till within the last sixty years. The most extraordinary of the two is the Ornithorhynchus, or, to translate the hard Greek word into English, the Duck-bill. Its mouth is a true duck's bill, a downright horny beak, and its short paws sprawling sideways with a membrane joining the toes together below, and coming a good deal beyond them in front, seem intermediate between the flippers of the seal and the webbed feet of a water-bird. ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace

... taxation, that it will induce greater care in the expenditure of the public money. Fraudulent contracts are not the only, nor even the chief cause of our financial embarrassments. It may be hoped that what is extracted from it by downright swindling, however considerable in amount, does not cause the great drain upon the Treasury. But if money can be obtained by the simple issue of evidences of debt, and without any provision to sustain the credit of the Government by taxation, the process of supply is too facile. The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... Little Peachey!" he called. "Thar ain't no more to be said than that—just you an' me in the Ragged Woods at sundown. An' now—Blessed if we ain't downright stampeded! It's a reg'lar round-up, Peachey!" And he laughed ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... not for the best, nor as I think they ought to be; but still they are better than that which is downright bad. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... lucky fellow to have been away from us, Terence, for it is downright starving we have been. The soldiers have only had a mouthful of meat served out to them as rations, most days; and they have got so thin that their clothes are hanging loose about them. If it hadn't been ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty

... when we could not keep our handkerchiefs wet. McAllister, like a brave fellow as he was, aroused himself, and endeavoured to encourage us to persevere. He especially warned the men against drinking salt water, telling them that it would be downright suicide, and that they might as well jump overboard and be drowned at once. We were certainly making way, and every hour lessening our distance to Jamaica. Again our hopes were raised. We had a few scraps of food to support ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston

... blood! Fortunately for the present race, there is not so much of that folly practised, but still there is room for improvement. To dose a healthy child with physic is the grossest absurdity. No, the less physic a delicate child has the better it will be for him, but physic to a healthy child is downright poison! And brimstone of all medicines! It is both weakening and depressing to the system, and by opening the pores of the skin and by relaxing the bowels, is likely to give cold, and thus to make a healthy, a sickly child. Sweeten his blood! It is more likely to weaken ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... It don't require any thinking to be aware of that. It's downright stupid;—two cousins with nothing a year between them, when no doubt each of them might do very well. They're well-born, and well-looking, and clever, and all that. It's absurd, and I don't suppose it will ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... of any tramps over my way," he said, frowning. "These old lunatics your uncle left here are simply hipped; that's all. Mr. Bashford made a mistake in turning the place over to them; it was silly, downright silly. It's a wonder you didn't think of upsetting his will on the ground of mental unsoundness. It's not up to me to suggest such a thing, but I believe you could knock ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson

... feelings were no study to himself; he knew nothing but the pleasure and the pain of them; but, I believe it was not mainly for himself that he was sorry. Like Othello, "the pity of it" haunted him: he had taken Alice for a downright girl, about whom there was and could be no mistake; and the first hot blast of prosperity had swept her away like a hectic leaf. What were all the shops dressed out in holly and mistletoe, what were all the ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald

... Pershore, about eight miles from Worcester, and, as I believe, had no notice of our march, came on very confidently in the morning, and found us fairly drawn up to receive them. I must confess this was the bluntest, downright way of making war that ever was seen. The enemy, who, in all the little knowledge I had of war, ought to have discovered our numbers, and guessed by our posture what our design was, might easily have informed themselves that we intended to attack them, and so might ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe

... the Ocean have such an honest and amusing frankness about you," he said, "that I vow to God you are overwhelming. I am a downright admirer of your noble calling, and something skilled in its terms. What spectacle, for instance, can be finer than a noble ship 'stemming the waves with her taffrail,' and chasing her wake, like a racer ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... to me a downright shame," Ronald said indignantly; "and though I have no great love for the English, and hate their Hanoverian George and his people, I shouldn't like to fight with one of the Scotch regiments in the French service in ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty

... differed, he fancied, not by more and less religion, but by more and less dissimulations. And, therefore, it seemed to him scandalous that a princess, who must, of course, in her heart regard (in common with himself) all mysteries as solemn masques and mummeries, should pretend in a case of downright serious business, to pump up, out of dry conventional hoaxes, any solid objection to a man of his shining merit. 'The Trinity,' for instance, that he viewed as the password, which the knowing ones gave in answer to the challenge of the sentinel; but, as soon ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... remarked Tom, as he was stowing away his second generous piece of pie, "the feed at the Hall is all right, but when it comes to a real, downright spread, like this, the palm goes to Aunt Martha." And Dick and Sam agreed ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield

... a high premium on individual courage in combat, and the weakling or coward was crushed contemptuously. I don't even attempt to justify the Indian treatment of captured civilians and noncombatants, but nevertheless, I absorbed quite a few of my grandfather's ideals and views about war, and it's downright disgusting to see him so falsely represented by the authors of the run-of-the-mill Western story ...
— Pushbutton War • Joseph P. Martino

... shrewd Horace, with disportive wit, Rally his friend, and tickle while he bit; Winning access, he play'd around the heart, And, gently touching, prick'd the tainted part. The crowd he sneer'd; but sneer'd with such a grace, It pass'd for downright ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... rich young voice of the mistress of the house, "I'm so glad. Roger Barnes, this is just downright good of you; it's so long ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond

... Poor dear hat! how its vanity (if hats have vanity) must have suffered! For certain its owner had none, unless a lurking pride in his own bluffness and bluntness may be termed such. He piqued himself on being a plain downright Englishman, and on a voice and address pretty much like his apparel, rough, strong, and warm, fit for all weathers. A ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various

... Apollo! And immediately the little broth plays the mischief with me, and is disturbed and rumbles like thunder, and grumbles dreadfully: at first gently pappax, pappax; and then it adds papa-pappax; and finally, it thunders downright ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes

... is little doubt that he felt the former attacks the more bitterly of the two. Dennis, his first critic, called him "a short squab gentleman, the very bow of the God of love; his outward form is downright monkey." A rival poet whom he had offended hung up a rod in a coffee house where men of letters resorted, and threatened to whip Pope like a naughty child if he showed his face there. It is said, though perhaps not on the best authority, that when ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope

... notes with Moore, I was confirmed in one or two points which I had always laid down in considering poor Byron. One was, that like Rousseau he was apt to be very suspicious, and a plain downright steadiness of manner was the true mode to maintain his good opinion. Will Rose told me that once, while sitting with Byron, he fixed insensibly his eyes on his feet, one of which, it must be remembered, was deformed. Looking up suddenly, he saw Byron regarding him with a look of concentrated ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... when I was twelve years old I was adopted by a gentleman in Papeite, and he sent me to Sydney to school. Do you know Sydney? Well, I was three years with the Misses F——, in —— Street. My goodness! I WAS glad to leave—and so were the Misses F—— to see me go. They said I was downright wicked, because one day I tore the dress off a girl who said my skin was tallowy, like my name. When I came back to Tahiti my guardian took me to Raiatea, where he had a business, and said I must marry ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke

... Laurie passes so quickly from hyper-loyalty to downright treason, that he is an insolvable problem. As wigs were once worn out of compliment to a monarch, so when the Queen expects a little heir, Sir Peter causes a gentleman, over whom he has an accidental influence, to have a little hair too. But oh the hypocrite! the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various

... "I've made it downright good and dainty, and he never found it out. I bought the lard and the spices out of my six francs: I'm the mistress of my own money"; and she disappeared rapidly, fancying she ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac

... to the front of the table): Look here, Olivia, you're downright rude to that boy, and if there's one thing that never gets a woman anywhere, it's rudeness. What have ...
— Night Must Fall • Williams, Emlyn

... obey. One hears so much nowadays of the black population having equal rights with the white inhabitants, that it is well to remember how ferociously their lack of civilization occasionally comes out. Doubtless there are cruel men both white and black, but for downright brutality the nigger is hard to beat, and it is also quite certain that whom the latter does not fear he will not love. I have personally experienced great devotion and most attentive service on the part of natives, and they are deserving ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... his father agreed, "a long fourteen. And my horse was pumped, regularly pumped. I can't bear to see a horse as done as that. It distresses me, downright distresses me. Hate to over-press a horse. Hate to over-press anything that can't stand up to you and take its revenge on you. Always feel ashamed of myself if I've over-pressed a horse. But I hadn't ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... should be the marble image of death or weariness. So the concomitants should be distinctly marble, severe and monumental in their lines, not shroud, not bedclothes, not actual armor nor brocade, not a real soft pillow, not a downright hard stuffed mattress, but the mere type and suggestion of these: a certain rudeness and incompletion of finish is very noble in all. Not that they are to be unnatural, such lines as are given should be pure and true, ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... he shook the bridle. Dashing aslantwise, as before, the winged horse made another arrow-flight toward the Chimaera, and Bellerophon aimed another downright stroke at one of the two remaining heads, as he shot by. But this time, neither he nor Pegasus escaped so well as at first. With one of its claws, the Chimaera had given the young man a deep scratch in his shoulder, and had slightly damaged the left wing of the flying steed with the other. On his ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... what truth is, so well as wise people like you and your professor; but one thing I do know about it, and that is that it is not pleasant to the ear; falsehood is far more esteemed; it is prettier, and therefore pleasanter; while Truth, conscious of its purity, blurts out downright remarks, and offends people. Here is a case of it: even you are offended with me for having discovered (with your assistance) how this matter really stands, and shown that our common object is hard of attainment. Suppose you had been in love with a statue and hoped to win ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... picnicking," she said. "A whole lot of us. Somehow, I wandered away from the others...." One minute the hill was bright with sun, and the next it was deep in shadows and the wind that had been merely cool was downright cold. She shivered and glanced around expecting her mother to be somewhere near, holding out a sweater or jacket. There was no one at all in sight. Even then, she never thought of being frightened. She turned to retrace her steps. There was a big tree that looked familiar, ...
— The Sound of Silence • Barbara Constant

... sentence for the purpose of emphasizing some idea, a writer has not entire freedom. Good use, which is the use of acknowledged masters, decides what may be done. There are certain arrangements of words to which we are accustomed; and the disregard of them leads to obscurity or downright contrariety in the thought. "Brutus stabbed Caesar" is the common order; "Brutus Caesar stabbed," or "Stabbed Brutus Caesar," is obscure; while "Caesar stabbed Brutus" is the very opposite of the truth. Those who have studied Latin know that as far as ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... something about you Britishers I can't help admiring!" he declared. "You are downright, ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... you before now but for constant and arduous occupation. . . . I am very glad to hear of the success of your reading, and still more glad that you went at it in downright earnest. I should never have made my success in life if I had been shy of taking pains, or if I had not bestowed upon the least thing I have ever undertaken exactly the same attention and care that I have bestowed ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various

... won't discuss it," she said, with resignation. "I knew you would refuse me." She approached the door. Her mother got up and resolutely stood in the way. "Before you commit an act of downright madness," Mrs. Presty said, "I mean to try if I can stop you. Go back ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins

... daughter, sister, friend, without impeachment of one's sagacity or integrity; but it is such a dreadful indorsement of a man to marry him! Her own consciousness must be sufficiently grievous; pray do not irritate it into downright madness. Nay, what, after all, are the so heinous faults upon which you animadvert? She cannot earn a cent: that may be her misfortune, it need not be her fault. Perhaps Clement, like Albano, and all good husbands, "never loved to see the sweet form anywhere else ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... created. The less we know about the personalities of very distinguished geniuses, the better it is for their fame. Shakspeare might not seem so great to us if we knew his peculiarities and infirmities as we know those of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Carlyle; only such a downright honest and good man as Dr. Johnson can stand the severe scrutiny of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord

... Mrs. Gray, wiping her eyes, and settling her hair, "it was downright careless of me not to tell you right away, but I was so excited over Austin that I forgot all about it for a minute; of course, it's a dreadful disappointment to you, but it just couldn't seem to ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes

... beginning of many tunes very well, but there leaves them, and goes no further. So up and to my office, where we sat, and among other things I had a fray with Sir J. Minnes in defence of my Will in a business where the old coxcomb would have put a foot upon him, which was only in Jack Davis and in him a downright piece of knavery in procuring a double ticket and getting the wrong one paid as well as the second was to the true party. But it appeared clear enough to the board that Will was true in it. Home to dinner, and after dinner by water to the Temple, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... that rang out this downright exposition of the facts. Sir John shook his head; he ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... evidently been coming more and more urgently into the workday deliberations of the American administration. Of course, it is not spoken of in set terms to this effect in official utterances, perhaps not even within doors; that sort of thing is not done. But it can do no harm to use downright expressions in a scientific discussion of these phenomena, with a view to understanding the current drift ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... long out of all reasonable proportion. She was so hollow in the back that she seemed to have been bent in a machine. She had neither tail nor mane, and her neck, as long as a man, stuck straight up into the air, supporting a head without ears. Her eyes had an expression in them of downright insanity, and the muscles of her face were afflicted with periodical convulsions that drew back the corners of the mouth and wrinkled the upper lip so as to produce a ghastly grin every two or three seconds. In color she was "claybank," ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... would be no match for a few regular men-of-war. New England had no navy, though the New Englanders had enjoyed a good deal of experience in minor privateering against the Spaniards during the last few years, as well as a certain amount of downright piracy in time of peace, whenever a Frenchman or a Spaniard could be safely taken at a disadvantage. So Shirley asked Commodore Warren, commanding the North American station, to lend his aid. Warren had married an American and was very well disposed towards the colonists. But, having no orders ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood

... to get rid of the downright vulgarity of phrase in the last stanza, Wordsworth invents an impossible tortoise-shell, and thus robs his story of the reality which alone gave it a living interest. Any extemporized raft would have floated the boy down to immortality. But Wordsworth never quite learned the distinction ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... The first translation into English was published in 1905 in Tokyo by Capt. E. F. Calthrop, R.F.A. However, this translation is, in the words of Dr. Giles, "excessively bad." He goes further in this criticism: "It is not merely a question of downright blunders, from which none can hope to be wholly exempt. Omissions were frequent; hard passages were willfully distorted or slurred over. Such offenses are less pardonable. They would not be tolerated ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu

... ——Stark, errant, downright beggars. Ay, Without equivocation, statute beggars, Couchant and passant, guardant, rampant beggars; Current ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... way, but it wasn't much of a way. She liked the fine clothes and the trinkets he gave her, but, after he went blind, she could hardly tolerate him. Lots of times, she would have been downright cruel to him if I hadn't ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed

... Matt. vii. 14. But forasmuch as the passage was wonderful narrow, even so narrow that I could not, but with great difficulty, enter in thereat, it showed me, that none could enter into life, but those that were in downright earnest, and unless also they left that wicked world behind them; for here was only room for body and soul, but not for body ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan

... should have seen less of him, and it would have dawned on him gradually; but here he would discover it at once. And I dreaded his doing so. Yes, I was a downright coward, ashamed of the One who had died for me. This was not a comfortable reflection, but I was convinced ...
— Christie, the King's Servant • Mrs. O. F. Walton

... to you, of course, and it can't make any difference—really—to him; but it's a downright dishonourable thing to do, and that makes a jolly lot of difference to me. You see, I haven't any business to go and feel ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... live at Florence among vulgar vices and tame slavery, will stare at these accounts. Pray be acquainted with your own country, while it is in its lustre. In a regular monarchy the folly of the Prince gives the tone; in a downright tyranny, folly dares give itself no airs; it is in a wanton overgrown commonwealth that whim and debauchery intrigue best together. Ask me which of these governments I prefer—oh! the last—only I fear it is the ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

... plates, and glasses distributed. But for the feast. Mr. Snodgrass's basket was opened, and out of it were taken four remarkably fine chickens, and a tongue—uncooked! There was but one mode of accounting for this trifling omission. Mr. Snodgrass's Betty was a downright matter-of-fact person, who obeyed orders to the very letter. Having been told, the evening before, to get four fine chickens for roasting, together with a tongue, and to pack them, next morning, in a basket, she did so literally and strictly; but, as she had received ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various

... externally agreeable, of bending in all indifferent matters to the whims and wishes of superiors, and of saying what they think Signori like. This habit, while it smoothes the surface of existence, raises up a barrier of compliment and partial insincerity, against which the more downright natures of us Northern folk break in vain efforts. Our advances are met with an imperceptible but impermeable resistance by the very people who are bent on making the world pleasant to us. It is the ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... positive evidence of downright frauds and vicious food adulteration in the times of Apicius. The old rascal himself is not above giving directions for rose wine without roses, or how to make a spoiled honey marketable, and other similar adulterations. Those of our readers with sensitive gastronomic instinct had better skip the ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind. For God's sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself! As for the others, the irony of facts shall take it out of their hands, and make fools of them in downright earnest, ere the farce be over. There shall be such a mopping and a mowing at the last day, and such blushing and confusion of countenance for all those who have been wise in their own esteem, and have not learnt the rough lessons that youth hands on to age. If we are ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... "If you show off with your tempers, that will give a color to their notion that you have been badly brought up. You must do us and yourself what credit you can, going amongst strangers. I am not afraid for you, unless you set up your little back, and determine to be downright naughty and perverse." ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... were to be wished) I would rather have a plain downright wisdom, than a foolish and affected eloquence. For what is so furious and Bedlam like as a vain sound of chosen and excellent words, without any subject of sentence or ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson

... as Dulcie expressed it, "rather a dear, quaint thing." But she was more than that, I thought. She had such a pungent wit, her sayings were at times so downright—not to say acrid—that many stood in terror of her and positively dreaded her quick tongue. I rather liked Aunt Hannah myself, perhaps because, by the greatest of good luck, I happened not to have done anything so far to incur her displeasure, ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux

... parable we may detect a feeling of surprise creeping over our minds, that the Lord, who had the whole world and its history before him whence to select his examples, should have chosen a specimen of worldly wisdom, damaged by an admixture of downright falsehood, in order to stimulate thereby the spiritual zeal of his own disciples. The three following observations will, in my judgment, explain and completely remove the difficulty:—(1.) The Holy One, precisely because he is perfectly holy, can ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... comprehended and admired. His authority was sufficient to override all scruples that might have stood in the way of this downright description of Mary's charms. He became the model for all her later worshippers; Suso, for instance, often quotes him, and Brother Hans called him the harpist and fiddler ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... guess the feminine mind is too innocent to understand all these immoral writers. I'm sure I don't want to criticize Bernard Shaw; I understand he is very popular with the highbrows in Minneapolis; but just the same——As far as I can make out, he's downright improper! The things he SAYS——Well, it would be a very risky thing for our young folks to see. It seems to me that a play that doesn't leave a nice taste in the mouth and that hasn't any message is nothing but—nothing but——Well, whatever it may be, it ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... clearness of expression in this, and a downright surrender of himself, which so flattered her and so fluttered her that she was almost reduced to the giving of herself up because she could not reply to such an appeal in language less courteous than that of agreement. After a moment or two she found herself remaining silent, with a ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... gay laugh and the strained look passed in a moment from her eyes. "I was all that was beautiful a little while ago. You're quite right though. It is a foul book, and the man who wrote it is a downright beast. Take it away, and never ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... for the reasons known to women. Her intimate friendships were with women as with men. The closest friend of this most manfully-minded of women was one of her sex, little resembling her, except in downright truthfulness, lovingness, and ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... little bigot, you at a ball! Do you know, my girl, this seems to me downright nonsense! You and the hornpipe! Faith, all you need now is to want to get married! A deuce of a want, that! But if you marry, I warn you that I won't keep you—mind that! I've no desire to wait on your brats! Come a little nearer——Oho! why——bless my soul! Mademoiselle ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... are you doing?" ejaculated Bonaparte, angrily. "Will not the princess tell the Count de Provence that the Tuileries are now inhabited by a downright bourgeois and hen-pecked husband, who treats his wife sentimentally even in the presence of other persons, and in return for her caresses has always to comply with her wishes? And shall we not be laughed ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... idealizes a scene. How much less romantic the town looked now than when I saw it floating, as it seemed, upon the sky-blue water in a haze of gold-dust fired by the slanting rays! It was then like the Castillon of some troubadour's song; now it was a mean-looking little sun-baked town modernized to downright plainness, with no remnant of its ramparts remaining save a sombre old Gothic gateway near the river, and no ecclesiastical architecture deserving notice. Its site, however, is the same as that which it occupied in the Middle Ages, namely, close to ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... the king, at last, to grant it to all Scottish officers, pointing out that they were able to do much better service with their own claymores, than with weapons to which they were altogether unaccustomed; and that Scottish men were accustomed to fight with the edge, and to strike downright sweeping blows, whereas the swords here are fitted only for the point, which, although doubtless superior in a duel, is far less effective in ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty



Words linked to "Downright" :   intensifier, complete, intensive, honest, honorable



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