"Stern" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... other human being with whom she was in relations? Helen perceived, or rather felt, that she had, folded up in the depths of her being, a true womanly nature. Through the cloud that darkened her aspect, now and then a ray would steal forth, which, like the smile of stern and solemn people, was all the more impressive from its contrast with the expression she wore habitually. It might well be that pain and fatigue had changed her aspect; but, at any rate, Helen looked into her eyes without that ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the general's entire fortune. Roland's departure on this adventurous expedition deeply afflicted the poor widow. The death of the father seemed to presage that of the son, and Madame de Montrevel, a sweet, gentle Creole, was far from possessing the stern virtues of a Spartan or ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... nights spent in the motley company, and it struck him that the person of the veiled lady would be an addition which might enhance his credit. Monsieur Jausion found, however, that an important figure was lacking, and he asked in a stern tone whether Bousquier had not forgotten somebody. Bousquier was startled and pondered. "Try your best to remember," urged the magistrate; "what you conceal may turn into a rope for your neck. Speak out, then: was there not a tall, robust man present also?" ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... Baron accordingly descended the steps into the galiot's boat, in the stern of which sat the Captain, his weight lifting the bows up considerably out of the water. A sailor in a woollen shirt who had lost one eye, and squinted with the other, and a nose, the ruddy tip of which seemed anxious ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... touched the back of the animal, which, irritating him, occasioned this furious attack; and had he got his upper jaw above the gunwale, the whole broadside must have been torn out. The force of the shock from beneath, previously to the attack, was so violent, that her stern was almost lifted out of the water, and Mr. Tambs, the midshipman steering, was thrown overboard, but fortunately rescued before the irritated ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... merry with the hard-drinking old Peninsular veterans, and the noisy and swaggering subalterns of the ill-famed 102nd Regiment (or New South Wales Corps), she always shuddered and looked pale and ill at ease when she saw among my father's guests the coarse, stern face of the minister, and her dislike of the clergyman was shared by all we children, especially by my elder brother Harry (then sixteen years of age), who called him 'the flogging parson' and the 'Reverend Diabolical ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... weighed, the propeller begins to turn, and the vessel steers a course northwards through the Bosporus. With my field-glasses I settle down on a bench in the stern and take farewell of the Turkish capital. How grand, how unforgettable is this scene! The white, graceful minarets shoot up to heaven from the sea of houses, and the cypresses—tall, grave, and straight as ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... the water" for craw-fish. For this purpose, we procured a pair of grains, with a long staff like a harpoon, and making torches with tarred rope twisted round a long pine stick, took the only boat on the beach, a small skiff, and with a torch-bearer in the bow, a steersman in the stern, and one man on each side with the grains, went off, on dark nights, to burn the water. This is fine sport. Keeping within a few rods of the shore, where the water is not more than three or four feet deep, with a clear sandy ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... for his mind was relieved by Mr. Hawes's moderation; he looked up and saw a cold, stern eye dwelling on him with a meaning that had nothing to do ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... Fenwick," said she, still standing beside me, her countenance now hard and stern. "Look where I stand, I am the World! The World, not as satirists depreciate, or as optimists extol its immutable properties, its all-persuasive authority. I am the World! And my voice is the World's voice when it thus warns you. Should you make this marriage, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... meantime,' continued Dare, 'to lend a little romance to stern realities, I'll tell you a singular dream I had just before you returned to England.' Power looked contemptuous, but Dare went on: 'I dreamt that once upon a time there were two brothers, born of a Nonconformist family, one of whom became a railway-contractor, and the ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... kind-hearted, honest man, albeit, by virtue of his office, somewhat strict and stern. You could read the Categories in the wrinkles of his colorless face, and contested passages of Thucydides in the crows'-feet round his eyes. The everlasting grind at the educational tread-mill had worn away all he might once ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... suspicions were suggested to Kamakura. The regent, Takatoki, who, though a careless libertine in his habits, living in the society of his thirty concubines, his troops of dancing mimes, and his packs of fighting dogs, was capable of stern resolution on occasions, threatened to ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... feet, Those stern, impassioned stress A thoroughfare for freedom beat Across the wilderness! America! America! God mend thine every flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... retract that 'stern decree,'" exclaimed the baronet, "would you break the heart of the love-sick nymph, by chilling indifference to the potency of her charms and the magnitude of her fortune? However, all joking apart, my good friends, will you do my aunt and ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... us, the Chimes, one note bespeaking disregard, or stern regard, of any hope, or joy or pain, or sorrow, of the many-sorrowed throng; who hears us make response to any creed that gauges human passions and affections, as it gauges the amount of miserable food on which humanity may pine ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various
... of white marble. At the end of this gallery stood a shape of exceeding brilliancy, the shape of a woman above mortal height, clad from head to foot in shining mail armour. In her right hand was a spear, on her left arm a shield. Her brow was hidden by a helmet, and the aspect of her face was stern,— severe even, I thought. I approached her, and as I went, my body was lifted up from the earth, and I was aware of that strange sensation of floating above the surface of the ground, which is so common with me in sleep that at times I can scarce persuade myself after ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... tempted to laugh at his apparition), but turned to James and bade him see to the rest and find beds somewhere. Then I went after Dolly and her father into the Great Chamber, still with my hat on my head and looking very stern. He was talking very swiftly in a low voice to Dolly; but he stopped when ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... still closer together as they reached the beginning of the sheep-path; and now the man's face may be said to have taken on two coats of expression—a stern judicial look with a smile underneath. The thought that he was about to execute Justice occupied his mind wholly as the old wether led them into the strait and narrow way. With the object of catching the ewe, he ran on ahead toward the path, beside which he stationed himself, ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... At her command, wherever she has been duly acknowledged, many of the evils of life have already fled. The prisoner of war is no longer led into the amphitheatre to become a gladiator, and to imbrue his hands in the blood of his fellow-captive for the sport of a thoughtless multitude. The stern priest, cruel through fanaticism and custom, no longer leads his fellow-creature to the altar to sacrifice him to fictitious gods. The venerable martyr, courageous through faith and the sanctity of his life, is no longer hurried to the flames. ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... wonderful air-ship, the "Albatross," which he had constructed. He meant thus to prove to them beyond argument the correctness of his assertions. This ship, a hundred feet long, was upheld in the air by a large number of horizontal screws and was driven forward by vertical screws at its bow and stern. It was managed by a crew of at least half a dozen men, who seemed absolutely devoted to ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... characteristic of the understanding between these two that Patrick made no effort to "break the news," or soften it in any way. He had always been prepared to face facts himself, and he had trained Sara in the same stern creed. ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... heart, rose suddenly and escaped to the back stairway. She left old Polly sitting in the kitchen so long that she fell into a comfortable drowse, from which she was recalled by Maria's reappearance with a bundle of discarded garments, but there was something stern and inhospitable in these last moments of the visit, and Polly soon shuffled off down the lane, mumbling and muttering and hugging the bundle with great delight. She always enjoyed her visits to the Haydon farm. But she had left Miss Durrant crying by the western window; ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... and clear, when, o'er the snows, Andes! thy melancholy Spirit rose,— A shadow stern and sad: he stood alone, Upon the topmost mountain's burning cone; And whilst his eyes shone dim, through surging smoke, Thus to the spirits ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... his life, yet he had a whole crew within himself as truly as the "elderly naval man" who had eaten one. There was therefore no occasion for extensive quarters. Fortunately, an available space at the stern was ample for the crew's ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... translations of parts of it, which we hope to print or reprint, and that most pleasantly jumbled abstract of its parts by Sir Thomas Maleor, Knight, which has long been the delight of many a reader,—though despised by the stern old Ascham, whose Scholemaster was to turn it out of the land.—There the glory of the Holy Grail will be revealed to him; there the Knight of God made known; there the only true lovers in the world will tell their loves and kiss their ...
— Arthur, Copied And Edited From The Marquis of Bath's MS • Frederick J. Furnivall
... sad for a moment and then stern. "Nevertheless, I think my aunt, the Cacica, should have met him. She would have seen that he was a man and would have used men's reasons with him. She made Medicine against him as though he were a god, and in the end his medicine was stronger ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... of the department, from whom she received her work, was a man of middle-age, of rather stern and forbidding aspect; and as she approached his desk, he pointed to the clock on ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... been acquainted with Mr. Brassey, and had once received a visit from him on official business of difficulty and importance. He expected, he says, to see a hard, stern, soldierly sort of person, accustomed to sway armies of working-men in an imperious fashion. Instead of this he saw an elderly gentleman of very dignified appearance and singularly graceful manners—"a gentleman of the old school." "He stated his case, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... stood near the water's brink, waist deep in the curling vines. As he gazed upon the scarecrow figure in the stern of the dory a sprightly interest ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... was, in prospect of a long siege, scanty. But the worst of all, indeed the only weak and therefore miserable fact, was, that the spirit, I do not mean the courage, of the castle was gone; its enthusiasm had grown sere; its inhabitants no longer loved the king as they had loved him, and even stern-faced general Duty cannot bring up his men to a hand-to-hand conflict with the ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... room opened, and Laura came forth with a pale and stern face. She looked at Pen with glances from which beamed pride, defiance, aversion. "Arthur, your mother is very ill," she said; "it is a pity that you should speak so ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... also, through a window in the floor of the pilot house, seen the hapless motor boat. The men in it were frantically waving their hands to those on the airship. "I'm going down as close as I dare," went on Tom. "You watch, and when it's time, have Koku drop from the stern a long, knotted rope. That will be a sort of ladder, and they can make it fast to their boat and climb up, hand over hand. It's the ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... reefs of purple-black clouds. The river, below the Carewe homestead, was livid. Beyond it, the sea was dark and brooding. It was an evening to make most people shiver and forebode an early winter; but Thyra loved it, as she loved all stern, harshly beautiful things. She would not light a lamp because it would blot out the savage grandeur of sea and sky. It was better to wait in the darkness ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... danger, and we were in agony. The weather was wet and tempestuous, but the body is delicate only when the mind is at ease. We pushed through wind and rain, the anxiety of our sensations every moment redoubling. At last we read the word London on her stern. 'Pull away, my lads! she is from old England! A few strokes more, and we shall be aboard—hurrah for a belly full, and news from our friends!' Such were our exhortations to the boat's crew. A few minutes completed our wishes, and we found ourselves on ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... the travelling M.P. treasures up and the Anglo-Indian hastens to throw away? A. Erroneous, hazy, distorted first impressions. Before the eyes of the griffin, India steams up in poetical mists, illusive, fantastic, subjective, ideal, picturesque. The adult Qui Hai attains to prose, to stern and disappointing realities; he removes the gilt from the Empire and penetrates to the brown ginger-bread of Rajas and Baboos. One of the most serious duties attending a residence in India is the correcting of those misapprehensions which your travelling M.P. sacrifices his bath ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... between two and three o'clock when I was called to go on watch; and after I had been sitting in the stern smoking and thinking for an hour or more, I noticed that the light on the mast had gone out. It was, however, growing lighter, and, fancying that the fog was thinner, I trusted to the coming of the day and a breeze, and made no attempt to take down ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... land, headed by the king, and officered by his polluted courtiers; led on with all the pomp and splendour which royalty could display. The king and his ministers well knew that the most formidable enemies to tyranny, oppression, and misgovernment, were the piety and stern morality of the Puritans, Nonconformists, and the small classes of virtuous citizens of other denominations; and therefore every effort was made by allurements and intimidation to debauch and demoralize their minds. Well does Bunyan say that 'wickedness like ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... handled cleverly; but as they gained the middle of the stream it grew deeper and deeper, until at last they could only just reach the bottom. The ends of the poles were only a foot above the water, which rendered their use difficult. Michael and Nadia, seated in the stern of the boat, and always in dread of a delay, watched the ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... masses of oak of russet brown—the rich and varied tints of the bracken contributing their share to the similitude of a glorious sunset; and the whole picture is rendered complete to the eye by being set in that massive rocky framework, known as the Aberuchill range, whose stern and rugged sides add to the feeling of the picturesque and beautiful ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... will see me die before you bring me food!" Hark! something is clanking the chain on the door. It is being opened. From the dark night without a black figure crosses the threshold. * * * It is the guard. He comes to warn me of my fate. He tells me that tomorrow I must die. In his stern face I laugh aloud. I do not ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... so low, and gazed upon her with an air so stern and strange, that Toby, to divert the current of his thoughts, inquired if ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... grim and stern would that rock-river have been but for Italy, and the powers of the Italian soil. But the forest and its lovely undergrowths, its heaths and creepers, its ferns and periwinkles, its lichen and mosses had thrown themselves on the frozen lava, had decked and softened its wild shapes, had ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... intended to have written from Ireland, but alas! as some stern old divine says, 'Hell is paved with good intentions.' There was such a whirl of laking, and boating, and wondering, and shouting, and laughing, and carousing—" [He alludes to his visiting among ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 36. Saturday, July 6, 1850 • Various
... Luckily this tutor's stern rule did not last long; and when a severe illness attacked the youth (then advanced to be a student at Edinburgh College) and brought him under his mother's charge once more, the bed on which he lay was piled with a constant succession of works of imagination, and he was allowed to find ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... been worse had it not been for the pegged prices and other stern measures. The glut on the labor market was tremendous and wages reached the vanishing point in a currency which would buy little. Suddenly, the United States, which had so long boasted of being the richest country in the world, found ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... in confusion. She saw standing there a middle-aged woman of medium height, with a withered face and stern demeanor. ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... hatred of her tone, its cold stern sharpness, and its mastered rage, presented her before me, as if I had seen her standing in the light. I saw the flashing black eyes, and the passion-wasted figure; and I saw the scar, with its white track cutting ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... one could fail to see—the change that day by day came over our reserved companion. The stern line of her lips relaxed. In amazement one day we heard her laugh. Then her laughter began to break forth on all occasions; and we listened to her singing above in her room, and we smiled at each other. That tightness ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall
... as simple and straightforward a procedure as Costigan's speech would indicate, but finally he did seek his own room and relaxed upon a pile of cushions, his stern visage transformed. Instead of the low metal ceiling he saw a beautiful, oval, tanned young face, framed in a golden-blonde corona of hair. His gaze sank into the depths of loyal, honest, dark-blue eyes; and looking deeper and deeper into those ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... as his chief historian entitles him, was a man of high military genius, rigid in discipline, skilful in administration, and daring in leadership; a stern, grave soldier, to whose face a smile rarely came except when shots were falling thick around him and when his staff appeared as if they would have preferred music of a different kind. To this intrepid chief fear seemed unknown, prudence in battle unthought of, and so many ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... Brandon's stern face softened as he looked at the old man, whose features were filled with the kindest expression, and whose tone showed the ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... stern and very busy whenever she came in, but she was wise in ways of men, and treated him as if he were a good comrade, and so gradually he came to talk to her almost as freely ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... leaning on the window, and weeping."' She had been in Prison, liberated once, but recaptured the same hour, ever since the first of June: in agitation and uncertainty; which has gradually settled down into the last stern certainty, that of death. In the Abbaye Prison, she occupied Charlotte Corday's apartment. Here in the Conciergerie, she speaks with Riouffe, with Ex-Minister Claviere; calls the beheaded Twenty-two "Nos amis, our Friends,"—whom we are soon to follow. During these ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... calm and stern, the maestro's face, in which Andrea had been trying to read the ideas he was uttering in inspired tones, though the chaotic flood of notes afforded no clue to them, had by degrees glowed with fire and assumed an impassioned force that infected Marianna and ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... studies or their lecture-rooms they may contrive for the time being to distort or to confuse for themselves the common view of the matter. But let the professor once forget his theories, and be forced to buffet against his life's importunate and stern realities: let him quarrel with his housekeeper because she has mislaid his spectacles, or his night-cap, or, preoccupied with her bible, has not mixed his gruel properly; and his conception of free-will will revert in an instant to the universal ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... person, our sense of the poetic is somewhat blunted; we feel that the lofty character drawn by Bulwer is in many respects a creation of the novelist, while the whole story of his love is demolished by the stern fact of his having a wife, of no reputable character, with whom he lived unhappily; but he was still a man of talent, of great mental, if not moral refinement, and of indomitable ardor in the pursuit of learning. The chief fault of his character until ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... it is not a hard name, for sailors make such a fuss about jaw-breaking words. An old coaster meant to name his vessel the Amphitrite, but he gave the name of Anthracite to the painter, and it was duly lettered upon the stern. However, it answered just as well, as the craft went into the ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... say. I'd start out all right, and I'd think I was going to get along beautifully. Then, all of a sudden, it would come over me, what I was doing—writing a letter to my father! And I could imagine just how he'd look when he got it, all stern and dignified, sitting in his chair in the library, and opening the letter just so with his paper-cutter; and I'd imagine his eyes looking down and reading what I wrote. And when I thought of that, my pen just wouldn't go. The idea of my writing ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... it up to me for that waltz you missed?" said Ruth Earp. She pretended to be vexed and stern, but he knew that she was not. "Or is ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... required, Otto gave his attention to the boat. It was a fine Indian canoe, buoyant enough to carry six or eight warriors, and furnished with three long paddles which, in skillful hands, could drive it with great speed through the water. It was made of bark, bow and stern being similar, curving inward toward the middle of the boat, and painted with rude designs outside, which showed more taste than did the ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... year.... The Kalends festival banishes all that is connected with toil, and allows men to give themselves up to undisturbed enjoyment. From the minds of young people it removes two kinds of dread: the dread of the schoolmaster and the dread of the stern pedagogue. The slave also it allows, so far as possible, to breathe the air of freedom.... |169| Another great quality of the festival is that it teaches men not to hold too fast to their money, but to part with it and let it pass ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... remembrance whether I have put down that when we came first to the ship, we had found the stern window upon the larboard side to be shattered; but so it was, and the bo'sun had closed it by means of a teak-wood cover which was made to go over it in stormy weather, with stout battens across, which were set tight with wedges. This he had done upon the first night, having fear that some evil thing ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... raise the question of the ethics of slavery, — on the other hand they defended it on biblical grounds, — but they did enjoin upon masters the duty of kindness to slaves. Many of them were not cultivated men, but they laid the foundation for a better civilization in a stern and righteous social life which flowered in the next generation. "The only burning issues were sprinkling versus immersion, freewill versus predestination," and over these questions the churches fought with energy. Divided though they were on many points, ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... and done by strangers and white people, in ignorance, no ill-luck need befall the nation, as might be the case were the symbol of its veneration offended by its own people. The voice of the king was more stern ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... the cheers of the disappointed remainder. We mourn our sad lot at being left out of the detail, when presently comes a second detail: Second Lieutenant Treadwell, Sergeant Ogle, Corporal Funk, and twenty privates, of whom you, Jenkins, are one. As you get ready, you adopt stern resolves, stiffen that upper lip, and confide a short message for some one to one of the survivors, in case, as you proudly hint, you should not return. The survivor rewards you with a pressure of the hand, and a look of wonder at ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... photography ships who were about to board. With some difficulty Jordan focussed the instrument and observed the two pilots walk across the apron in front of the main operations building and climb into their small ships. A blue halo formed softly around the stern of each as they cut on the engines and brought ...
— If at First You Don't... • John Brudy
... a match and bent low over the ghastly face of the man he had felled. The scoundrel was only stunned. Lennon's look of anxiety gave place to a stern smile. Though certain of the man's guilty intentions, he could not ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... Among the men desertions were very common; and on the occasion of a sudden alarm Wayne found that many of his sentries left their posts and fled. [Footnote: "Major General Anthony Wayne," by Charles J. Stille, p. 323.] Only rigorous and long continued discipline and exercise under a commander both stern and capable, could turn such men into soldiers fit for the work Wayne had before him. He saw this at once, and realized that a premature movement meant nothing but another defeat; and he began by careful and patient labor to turn his horde of raw recruits into ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Janet's kiss, he was unhappy; and when he reached the store, the clerks and porters were all standing together talking. He knew quite well what topic they were discussing with such eager movements and excited speech. But they dispersed to their work at the sight of his sour, stern face, and he did not intend to open a ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... face now assumed a grave, stern expression, "you might have replied, for instance, that the pedestal of this beautiful column would have to be the corpse of the First Consul." [Footnote: Bonaparte's own words.—Ibid., vol. ii., ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... for the doom to which she was condemned? He whose bright eyes could beam on her so radiantly had just wounded her with angry glances, like a foe or a stern judge, and his indignation ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the center of European art, and to assemble within its borders all the attractions of the civilized world. He spared no temptation to induce the Italian cantatrice to remain. When she attended his commands at the Tuileries she trembled like a leaf before the stern tyrant, under whose gracious demeanor she detected the workings of an unbending purpose. "Ou allez vous, madame?" said he, smilingly. "To London, sire," was the reply. "Remain in Paris. I will pay you well, and your talents will be appreciated. You shall receive a hundred thousand francs ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... the dock stood Lord Blandamer dressed in full peer's robes, and with a coronet on his head. The eyes of all were turned upon him, Westray, with fierce enmity and contempt, and it was he, Westray, that a stern-faced judge was sentencing, as a traducer and lying informer. Then the people in the galleries stamped with their feet and howled against him in their rage; and waking with a start, he knew that it was the postman's sharp knock on the street-door, ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... were silent. Then suddenly, without warning, there came a grinding crash that sent a shudder through the Kittlewake from stem to stern. ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... a stern veteran with a powerful brow, a shaggy eyebrow, and a piercing eye. He never rose, but leaned his chin on his hand, and his elbow on a table that stood between them, and eyed his visitor very fixedly and strangely. ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... clergyman denouncing Socialists for their "violent language." Poor fellow! He was quite unconscious that he was more bitter in his invective than the men he attacked. Of course Socialists use bitter and burning language—but not more bitter than was used by the great Hebrew prophets in their stern denunciations; not more bitter than was used by Jesus and his disciples; not more bitter than was used by Martin Luther and other great leaders of the Reformation; not more bitter than was used by Garrison and the other Abolitionists. Men with vital messages cannot ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... vicissitudes, and sufferings of life. No word occurs so frequently in their dramas as evils, ([Greek: kaka].) In witnessing the delineation of its miseries on the stage, they seem to have held somewhat of the same stern pleasure which the North American Indians have in beholding the prolonged torture inflicted on a condemned captive at the stake. Every one felt a thrill of interest at beholding how another could bear a series of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... for the back door again, and opened it, letting in the sunlight; but the sunlight fell in two slanting rays, one on either side of a dark object which all but filled the entrance, blocking out my view of the back court beyond. It was the stern of a tall boat. ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... never seen his father exhibit so much emotion before. Usually, on such occasions, he was stern, if not passionate; more ready to threaten and punish than to appeal to the heart and conscience. Now, all this was changed, and sorrow seemed to have taken the place of anger. Oscar was somewhat affected by this unusual manifestation of parental anxiety. He was pretty well hardened ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... This was no quiet gentle tap, intimating a modest intruder; no redoubled rattle, as the pompous annunciation of some vain person; neither did it resemble the formal summons to formal business, nor the cheerful visit of some welcome friend. It was a single blow, solemn and stern, if not actually menacing in the sound. The door was opened by some of the persons of the house; a heavy foot ascended the stair, a stout man entered the room, and drawing the cloak from his face, said, "Markham Everard, I greet thee in ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... beside him, sat in the stern. He had never taken much interest in Rufus before; but now, seated facing him, with the giant muscles and grim, unresponsive countenance of the man perpetually before his eyes, the selecting genius in him ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... yard, where the surf was not so great as at any other part of the shore. Here the Duke landed, but not without a thorough drenching, for no sooner had the bows of the boat touched the shore than a heavy sea broke right over her stern, and completely saturated his Grace's apparel. The Duke, upon landing, all wet as he was, immediately mounted his horse, and rode off to Walmer Castle. A numerous assemblage of persons had congregated on the beach when the ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... be spent in rowing along that grand coast, in scrambling among the rocks, or visiting the numerous caves, was to Estelle the height of delight. As the boat pushed off from the sandy beach, and Thomas swung himself into the stern, she gazed about her in silent ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... vehemently. He cursed and swore at him and called him a variety of unpleasant and detestable things and then he began to punch him with his fist wherever he could hit. Finally he partly turned him around, and gave him a hearty kick in the stern and said: "Damn you, get away from here! You're not fit to be with my brave men." The fellow departed as fast as his short legs would carry him. I knew of no other man presenting an excuse or asking for leave of absence that day. I believe every man of us preferred to meet the ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... promise, the making bare of His arm. 'By terrible things in righteousness' did He answer the prayer of Hezekiah, and give to all humble souls who are oppressed and cry to Him a pledge that 'as they have heard, so' will they 'see, in the city of' their 'God.' How much more impressive is the stern, naked brevity of the Scriptural account than a more emotional expansion of it, like, for instance, Byron's well-known, and in their way powerful lines, would have been! To the writer of this book it seemed the most natural thing in the world that the foes of Zion ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... you, spite of all our vows and promises.... You do not need to woo me, you do not need to persuade me! Ere you could speak I should be yours, now, this very moment, for a look, a smile—were it not for that pale spectre of my own self which rises ever before me, stern, inexorable, blocking every path which leads to you, and leaving only that one path free where the sign reads 'honor.' ... And I—I am sometimes frightened lest, in an overwhelming flood of love, that sign be ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... about the ornament. They have also great holes in their ears, wherein they wear such stuff as in their noses. They are very dexterous, active fellows in their proas, which are very ingeniously built. They are narrow and long, with outriggers on one side, the head and stern higher than the rest, and carved into many devices—viz., some fowl, fish, or a man's head painted or carved; and though it is but rudely done, yet the resemblance appears plainly, and shows an ingenious fancy. But with what instruments ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... detestation for tattling and tale-bearing. He did not like to go on deck and inform the principal of the conduct of Pelham, but he could not submit to the indignity cast upon him. He went out into the cabin, and threw himself upon the cushioned divan, under the stern ports of the ship. ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... may, Peter's stern words to Ananias put all the stress of the sin on its being an acted lie. The motives of the trick are not disclosed. They may have been avarice, want of faith, greed of applause, reluctance to hang back when others were doing like Barnabas. It is hard to read ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... another?" The question came sharp and stern; but a moment later the Squire mollified it, turning to the priest and looking him straight in the eyes. "Excuse me; I ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of yore, as Ancient Stories tell, A King in love with a great Princess fell. Long at her feet submiss the Monarch sigh'd, While she with stern repulse his suit denied. Yet was he form'd by birth to please the fair, Dress'd, danc'd, and courted with a Monarch's air; But Magic Spells her frozen breast had steel'd With stubborn pride, that knew not ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Rakshasas, even if they hide themselves in deep oceans, can have peace. In the days of yore, Daksha, for performing a sacrifice, had collected the necessary articles. Mahadeva destroyed that sacrifice in wrath. Indeed, he became very stern on that occasion. Shooting an arrow from his bow, he uttered terrible roars. The celestials then became filled with anxiety and fright. Indeed, when Mahadeva became angry and the Sacrifice (in its embodied form) ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Commissiones meras, or mere displays.[25] In this expression he hit off, happily enough, the somewhat theatrical, the slightly pedantic and pedagogic and professorial character of Seneca's diction, its rhetorical ornament and antitheses, and its deficiency in stern masculine simplicity and strength. In another remark he showed himself a still more felicitous critic. He called Seneca's writings Arenu sine Calce, "sand without lime," or, as we might say, "a rope of sand." ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... the captain, remained on board, resolving to trust their fortunes to the jolly-boat at the stern. We lowered it without difficulty, although it was only by a miracle that we prevented it from swamping as it touched the water. It contained, when afloat, the captain and his wife, Mr. Wyatt and party, a Mexican ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... requested our captain to go with him in the gig, and bring them away before the ship was burned. They did go, and the boat being very small, they sat very close side by side, on a piece of board not much more than two feet long, which, for want of proper seats, was laid across the stern of the boat. One of the French ships was burning at the time; her guns went off as fast as the fire reached them; and a chance shot took the board from under the two captains: the English captain was not hurt; but the splinters entered the body ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... her now that she faced the steady radiance of his wonderful eyes, so near that she could trace the faint lines about his mouth, the strong, stern immobility of his perfectly shaped, ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... exclaimed Shelby, "and Shackelton, and Peary,—yes and old Doc Cook! What an outlook! If those breaking waves were looking for a stern and rockbound coast to dash on, they missed it when they chose the New England shore instead of this! I've seen crags and cliffs, I've climbed the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn, but this puts it over all the earth! How do we get ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... courage which shirks no danger, when the danger is the inevitable accompaniment of duty. You have preached the essential virtues, the duty to be both brave and tender, the duty of courage for the man and courage for the woman. You have inculcated stern horror of the baseness which finds expression in refusal to perform those essential duties without which not merely the usefulness, but the very existence, of any nation will come ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... an imperious gesture. He looked rather stern, and then, as though conscious that this was not the attitude to take, ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... it!" answered McLean. "The Bird Woman is working for success, and success along any line is not won by being scared out. She will be back on the usual day, and ten to one, the Angel will be with her. They are made of pretty stern stuff, and they don't scare worth a cent. Before I left, I told the Bird Woman it would be safe; and it will. You may do your usual walking, but those four guards are there to remain. They are under your orders absolutely. They are prohibited ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Milton and the rest of those who wrote with measure, purity, and temperance; and from whose poetry proceeded a spirit of order, of tranquillity, of clearness, of simplicity; who were reticent in ornament, in illustration, and stern in rejection of unnecessary material. None of these classic excellences belong to Browning, nor did he ever try to gain them, and that was, perhaps, a pity. But, after all, it would have been of no use had he tried for them. We cannot impose from without ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... into that gay company, to throw off his cagoule and to dance a saraband. From end to end the big Gladiateur was bright with bunting—flags set in clusters on the great paddle-boxes, on the bow, on the stern—and the company thronging on board was living up to the brightness of ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... soft as sponge, overgrown with reed and goose grass. Here are not even low banks; there are no banks at all. Canoes are on a level with the land, and reeds sixteen feet high line the aisled water channels. One can stand on prow or stern and far as eye can see is naught but reeds and waterways, waterways ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... I stake a lamb, for stern is my father, and stern my mother, and they number all the ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... suddenly, and ere long one of the fierce gales which are so frequent in the Mediterranean burst upon them. The wind was behind them, and there was nothing to do but to let the galleys run before it. The sea got up with great rapidity, and nothing but the high poops at their stern prevented the two galleys being sunk by the great waves which followed them. The oars were laid in, for it was impossible to use them ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... it occurred to her to try working the dugout into the stream by loading the stern with ballast and then rocking the bow back and forth along the bank until the craft eventually worked itself ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... continuing on the island some days, obtained passage towards the place of their destination. The vessel on board which they sailed was a Turkish lumberman, and in no way adapted to the conveyance of passengers. But, submitting to stern necessity, they made the best improvement of the circumstances under which they were placed. Of the voyage Mr. Smith says, "The wind was high, and, being contrary to the current, raised a cross and troublous sea. The vessel was terribly tossed, and, ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... with a kiss, to-morrow. All in the child's mind is confusion; she knows not what to do, were she as docile and as obedient as an angel of light. There is a long series of actions, words, thoughts and feelings, connected with right and wrong, of which nothing is ever said, except to forbid them, by stern and absolute authority. That one is good, and another bad, except according to the whim or fancy of the parent or teacher, the child ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... difficult to describe; made up of contrary and even contradictory qualities, they are indolent, tranquil, quiet, humane in peace; active, restless, cruel, ferocious in war: courteous, attentive, hospitable, and even polite, when kindly treated; haughty, stern, vindictive, when they are not; and their resentment is the more to be dreaded, as they hold it a point of honor to dissemble their sense of an injury till they find an opportunity to ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... nor the woman of genius the common woman's overwhelming specialization. And that is why our scriptures and other art works, when they deal with love, turn from honest attempts at science in physics to romantic nonsense, erotic ecstasy, or the stern asceticism of satiety ("the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom" said William Blake; for "you never know what is enough unless you know ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... genuine heart of terror. I thought of the dreary moors and hills outside, and the dark pine copses soughing in the wind of night; I remembered my companion's singular words up in my bedroom before dinner; and then I turned and noted carefully the stern countenance of the Colonel as he faced us and lit his big black cigar ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... said slowly, in a wondering voice; and so long grew the silence, and so plainly did there spread across "the Captain's" face the unspoken question, "Well, then what the devil are you applying here for?" that I felt all at once the stern necessity of putting in a word for myself or lose the ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... much to himself; he sent his beautiful wife on to the balcony twice a day to be saluted, and (more sparingly) let her work for him among the higher sort with her lips, her blushes, and her friendly grey eyes. He was humble in the Council, sober beneath the heaped-up honours of the popular voice, stern only with his mercenaries. A fortnight of this swept him to the top of his hopes. A deputation, with a laurel crown and the title of Dux in a casket, waited upon him. He had expected it for a week, and carefully dragooned ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... thousand — and overrun with the mongrel races from Syria, Greece, and Africa, and hiding away the remnants of its power in the Orient, became in a few centuries an easy prey to our ancestors "of the stern blue eyes, the ruddy hair, ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... summons, a man of stern and moody aspect appeared, with his hair and dress in great disorder. He was sustained by two others, and the group paused at the foot of the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... family of singers, with the same cheerful, hopeful courage in their uplifted faces with which for twenty years they have sung of the good time almost here, of every reform; there stood William Lloyd Garrison, stern Puritan, inflexible apostle, his work gloriously done in one reform, lending the weight of his unwearied, solid intellect to that which he believes is the last needed; there was Mrs. Paulina Wright Davis, a Roman matron in figure, her noble head covered with clustering ringlets ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... return, were contemptuously dubbed mangeurs de lard,[198] "pork-eaters," because their pampered appetites demanded peas and pork rather than hulled corn and tallow. Two of the crew, one at the bow and the other at the stern, being especially skilled in the craft of handling the paddle in the rapids, received higher wages than the rest. Into the canoe was first placed the heavy freight, shot, axes, powder; next the dry goods, and, crowning all, filling the canoe to overflowing, ...
— The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin • Frederick Jackson Turner
... sandy hair brushed right back over the top of his head, and no hair at all on his face. He might have been thirty, or he might have been fifty. His eyes were very small and close together; his brow was stern, and his mouth a good deal pulled down at the corners. Altogether, I didn't take to him at first glance, still less when he broke into the conversation and distinctly took the part ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... painting of which, in one of the pictures, cost five guineas. Peter Oliver, who was crazy, used to fight with these family pictures in the old Mansion House; and the face and breast of one lady bear cuts and stabs inflicted by him. Miniatures in oil, with the paint peeling off, of stern, old, yellow faces. Oliver Cromwell, apparently an old picture, half length, or one third, in an oval frame, probably painted for some New England partisan. Some pictures that had been partly obliterated by scrubbing with sand. The dresses, embroidery, laces of the Oliver family are generally ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with his thick muscular fingers spread over his brawny chest, with form erect, with head thrown back, and eyes fixed in stern resolve, I was impressed with an air of grandeur about him, and could not help thinking that in the black form before me, scantily clad in coarse cotton, there was the soul ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid |
