"Abrupt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... high-pitched, a small voice for such a big man, as we thought, and he had an abrupt manner of withdrawing attention that was to us rather disconcerting until we got used to it. His pockets were bulging with newspapers and memoranda, scrawled in the curiously obscure handwriting which I subsequently found much difficulty in learning to read, though it was plain enough when the ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... most abrupt change. I had never seen her furiously angry. She's a typical high echelon Washington secretary, cool, extremely well-mannered, cheerful without being bumptious. But this time she ...
— Tinker's Dam • Joseph Tinker
... irritated at finding himself dragged away in so abrupt a manner by this Englishman, had sought in his subtle mind for some means of escaping from his fetters; but no one having rendered him any assistance in this respect, he was absolutely obliged, therefore, to submit to the burden of his ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... improve, until again it is permanently impaired in old age, when they are finally lost. And so again, if a child lose merely a single tooth from the front of its mouth, lisping will result; or if a supernumerary or irregular tooth be present, the articulation will be abrupt and imperfect:—the former plainly showing the importance of the entireness of the series, and the latter, the necessity of regularity in ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... was duly obeyed, and the poet soon found himself in his little cottage. Patty was frightened to see what a sad change the few days' absence had wrought in her husband. He no longer talked sensibly as before, but addressed her and the children in an abrupt manner, asking for his 'Mary,' and complaining that all his friend's had left him. The poor wife soothed him as best she could, and after some efforts succeeded in calming his mind. At the end of a few days, Clare seemed again sufficiently well to leave the ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... Animals and Plants which have run wild.—In the cases hitherto considered, the reverting animals and plants have not been exposed to any great or abrupt change in their conditions of life which could have induced this tendency; but it is very different with animals and plants which have become feral or run wild. It has been repeatedly asserted in the most positive manner by various authors, that feral ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... was so abrupt and unforseen, that Djalma's servant could not even utter a single cry, a single groan. He tottered—the Strangler gave a vigorous pull at the cord—the bronzed countenance of the slave became purple, and he fell upon his knees, convulsively moving his arms. Then the Strangler threw him quite ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Mr. Tollmidge's formidable assertions relating to herself for the second time, Lady Lydiard's meditations came to an abrupt end. She rose, took the letters in both hands to tear them up, hesitated, and threw them back in the cabinet drawer in which she had discovered them, among other papers that had not been ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... the flamboyant and sticky puree on their plates, annoyed by the color scheme in combination with the soft wild-rose pink of the table bouquets, if not actually sickened by the fluid itself. For the first time since his abrupt seizure that morning she began to hope in her heart that Gaspard's illness might be a matter of days instead of weeks. She served Hildeguard and one of the other waitresses with more soup, and then began to boil some eggs to eke out the chicken, which, owing to her unprecedented ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... of partridges during this morning's march, and they heard the peculiar loud "chuck-a-chuck, chuck-a-chuck," of the red-legs in all directions. As we advanced the hills increased in height, and we passed through a valley, bordered on the right by abrupt cliffs, forming a wall-like summit to the exceedingly steep slope beneath, which had been created by the debris from the wasting face of rock. This flat-topped height may have been about 500 feet above the valley, and the white cliff, which was quite perpendicular ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... discussion on this Bill that the long personal friendship which had existed between Fox and Burke was brought to an abrupt termination.—H. ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... from the northern aisle, Rapid and shrill to its abrupt harsh close; And none gave answer for a certain while, For words must shrink from these most wordless woes; At last the pulpit speaker simply said, With humid eyes ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... as the point where Stony Creek and the Little Conemaugh form the Conemaugh the mountains followed by Stony Creek take an abrupt turn northward, and the waters of the Little Conemaugh flow into the Conemaugh at right angles with ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... queer," he thought, coming to an abrupt halt; "I screwed down that lamp and blew into the chimney in the orthodox fashion, so it couldn't have been that I unconsciously left ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... and character, as in art, has no sharp angles. Its lines seem continuous, so gently does curve melt into curve. It is sharp angles that keep many souls from being beautiful that are almost so. Our good is less good when it is abrupt, rude, ill timed, or ill placed. Many a man and woman might double their influence and success by a kindly courtesy and ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... an entirely different type from any of the scientists whom he had met in the Bureau. In the first place, he was a gem expert by profession, and consequently, more of a mineralogist than biologist. Tall, powerfully built, black-bearded, and abrupt, he gave an impression of volcanic force, and at the same time of great keenness. A scientist of remarkable discernment, he possessed with all his broad views a marvelous capacity for detail, and Colin soon learned that the somewhat slipshod methods of a college laboratory would ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... professing his willingness to deal with him on usual easy terms, demanded a cheque with the order. Alton fancied he recognized the hand of Hallam in this, but there was also something else which troubled him. Some of the men he had business with had been a trifle abrupt in their greetings, and others smiled sardonically when ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... pony's side sharply with the whip, and, standing motionless, Stutter watched them disappear over the abrupt ledge. Once she glanced shyly back, with a little seductive wave of the gauntleted hand, and then suddenly dropped completely out of view down the steep descent of the trail. Old Mike struck another match, and held the ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... our Sovereign, on his days of grand reviews and grand diplomatic audiences. I never saw him more condescending, more agreeable, or, at least, less offensive, than on the day of his last levee, before he set out to be inaugurated a King of Italy; nor worse tempered, more petulant, agitated, abrupt, and rude than at his first grand audience after his arrival from Milan, when this ceremony had been performed. I am not the only one who has made this remark; he did not disguise either his good or ill-humour; and it was only requisite to have eyes and ears to see and be disgusted at ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... trade to such a height That competition, bursting builders' bonds, Starts from the shop, and rushing through the roof, Unites the basement with the floors above; Till, like a giant, that outgrows his strength, The whole concern, struck with abrupt collapse, In one "tremendous failure" totters down!— 'Tis food on which philosophy may fatten. [Turns round, musing, and looks into a ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... sudden fire and energy, and Prescott noticed again that abrupt stiffening of the figure. He saw, too, another curious effect—her eyes suddenly turned from dark-blue to black, an invariable change when she was ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... of the hill they took a careful survey of the situation. The elevation was in the very center of the island. Down toward the other islands the slope was more abrupt than it was in the direction from which they ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield
... pretty discontent, did not harm her on the screen, but helped immensely, for they gave her character. It was delicious to see her eyes narrow with sudden resentment or girlish malice and widen again with equally abrupt affection. She was so pretty that she could afford to ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... . . . Well, to get back to Miles Chandon. . . . He was young—a second son, you'll remember, and poor at that; a second lieutenant in the Navy, with no more than his pay and a trifling allowance. The boy had good instincts," said Miss Sally with a short, abrupt laugh. "I may as well say at once that he wanted to marry me, but had been forced to dismiss ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... initiation of the young boy or girl by some older and more experienced person in whom inversion is already developed, and who is seeking the gratification of the abnormal instinct. This appears to be a not uncommon incident in the early history of sexual inverts. That such seduction—sometimes an abrupt and inconsiderate act of mere sexual gratification—could by itself produce a taste for homosexuality is highly improbable; in individuals not already predisposed it is far more likely to produce disgust, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... see her again. At Burey-le-Petit Joan remained between the end of January until her departure for Chinon, on the 23rd of February; and before taking final leave she asked and received her parents' pardon for her abrupt departure from them. ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... humility, and of his pride Ashamed. And in the coffin lay my wife. On, on, we went. The scene changed, and low hills Began to rise on each side of the path Until at last we came into a glen, From which the mountains soared abrupt to heaven, Shot cones and pinnacles into the skies. Upon the eastern side one mighty summit Shone with its snow faint through the dusky air; And on its sides the glaciers gave a tint, A dull metallic gleam, ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... from his distant conquests, passed the Rubicon, seized the purple, and fallen in the Senate beneath the swords of self-appointed executioners of his country's vengeance? No! nothing of all this. What means, then, this abrupt and fearful silence? What unlooked for calamity has quelled the debates of the Senate and calmed the excitement of the people? An old man, whose tongue once indeed was eloquent, but now through age had well nigh lost its cunning, has fallen ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... Sun-beings worked in those harmonies. Thus this part of man was given its form by the spiritual sounds of the universe; and at the same time the alternation between the clearer state of consciousness during the Sun period, and the duller one, was not so abrupt as was that between the waking state and that of absolutely dreamless sleep in contemporary man. The picture-consciousness was not so clear as the present waking consciousness; but on the other hand, the other consciousness ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... began to count Wethermill's winnings, and Ricardo, curious to know whose small, delicately gloved hand it was which had brought the game to so abrupt a termination, leaned forward. He recognised the young girl in the white satin dress and the big black hat whose nerves had got the better of her a few minutes since in the garden. He saw her now clearly, and thought her of an entrancing loveliness. She was moderately tall, ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... than his own courage had quite dared—putting the absent dots on several i's—he saw new questions swarm. They had been till now in a bunch, entangled and confused; and they fell apart, each showing for itself. The first he put to her was at any rate abrupt. "Have you heard of ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... billy. Have a little decent pride, can't you? Don't bestow attentions when they're unwelcome." Then she addressed herself to Mr. Iglesias, but without looking up. "I beg your pardon, all this must seem rather abrupt. But sometimes one's duty to one's family takes one on the jump, as you may say; and one repairs neglect right away also on the jump. But—but—there's one thing I should like to know—when I told you my name just now—Poppy St. John, Mrs. St. ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... found "much charm in their originality and national colouring," and that "his thoughts and through them the fingers stumbled over certain hard, inartistic modulations." Startling progressions, unreconciled contrasts, and abrupt changes of mood are characteristic of Slavonic music and expressive of the Slavonic character. Whether they ought to be called inartistic or not, we will leave time to decide, if it has not done so already; the Russian and other ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... of hearing, Isaac laughed. The only time he had done it during six years. And what a laugh! How, sublimely devoid of merriment! a sudden loud cackle of three distinct cachinni not declining into a chuckle, as we do, but ending sharp in abrupt and ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... held good in Shere Ali's case," Ralston went on; and there came a change in Linforth's voice. It grew rather stern, rather abrupt. ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... placed, to be shut out from all the world! Urn-like it was in shape, deep as an Urn; With rocks encompassed, save that to the South Was one small opening, where a heath-clad ridge Supplied a boundary less abrupt and close; A quiet treeless nook,[48] with two green fields, A liquid pool that glittered in the sun, And one bare Dwelling; one Abode, no more! It seemed the home of poverty and toil, Though not of want: the little fields, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... much about that," said the optimistic Bones, and took a short cut through the wood, knowing that the grounds made an abrupt turn where they ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... somewhere on the hill." This school was at "Apple Hill," as it was called, in the grounds of the present "Fernleigh," where the Clark residence was built and now stands. Owing to the number of trees and the abrupt slope to the river, it is not likely that a full-sized Base Ball game was ever played within these grounds. But it is pleasant to fancy young Doubleday standing here, surrounded by an eager crowd of boys, amid the golden sunlight and greenery of long ago, as he traces on ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... particular in hands at full liberty either to spot or to spare her, was touching enough to bring tears to all eyes. It perhaps had to do with the sudden emotion with which—using now quite a different manner—Mrs. Brookenham again embraced her, and even with this lady's equally abrupt and altogether wonderful address to her: "Between you and me straight, my dear, and as from friend to friend, I know you'll never doubt that everything must be all right!—What I spoke of to poor Mitchy," she went on to the ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... Guelph and Macaulay a Ghibelline. Macaulay is a most extraordinary man, and his astonishing knowledge is every moment exhibited, but (as far as I have yet seen of him, which is not sufficient to judge) he is not agreeable. His propositions and his allusions are rather too abrupt; he starts topics not altogether naturally; then he has none of the graces of conversation, none of that exquisite tact and refinement which are the result of a felicitous intuition or a long acquaintance with good society, or more probably a mixture of both. The mighty mass of ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... and after lighting a fresh cigar, stretched himself at full length upon the grass which grew on the river's bank, allowing his horse to graze at will. Just behind him rose the abrupt wall of the canon some thirty or forty feet in height which, at this hour of the morning, cast a deep shadow over the spot where he lay and halfway across the river in front of him. It was just the sort of place for an Indian or one of Dick's nature to linger in and dream and ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... and plan of the Timaeus differ greatly from that of any other of the Platonic dialogues. The language is weighty, abrupt, and in some passages sublime. But Plato has not the same mastery over his instrument which he exhibits in the Phaedrus or Symposium. Nothing can exceed the beauty or art of the introduction, in which he is using words after his accustomed ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... the plain and the plateau. Above us, rising ridge beyond ridge, slope beyond slope, spread the mountainous moor-country, bare and bleak for the most part, with here and there a patch of cultivated field or hardy plantation, and crowned highest of all with masses of huge grey crag, abrupt, isolated, hoary, and older than the deluge. These were the Tors—Druids' Tor, King's Tor, Castle Tor, and the like; sacred places, as I have heard, in the ancient time, where crownings, burnings, human sacrifices, and all kinds of bloody heathen rites were performed. ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... clerical gentleman bowed in acquiescence. For him to hear was to obey. But he felt curious to know what was the cause of so abrupt a termination ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... threw them in the dust, and trampled them under her feet. The doctor almost crying, the doctora pelting him with sarcasms, they arrived at the house of Captain Tiago. Linares, who was talking with Maria Clara, was no little disquieted by the abrupt arrival of his cousins. Maria, amid the pillows of her fauteuil, was not less surprised at the new physiognomy ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... one catch the exact moment of an abrupt change in nature. Yesterday, however, I watched a wonderful thing—the oncoming of ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... out, followed by old Roy, the Skye; the spaniel John, who had been cut off at the door by his master's abrupt exit, preceded her. Norah and Bee pushed back ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of filling the vacancy in his affections caused by the abrupt departure of Lola Montez, Fraeulein Schroder, a young actress at the Hof Theatre, endeavoured to comfort Ludwig in his retirement. He, however, was beyond forming any ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... you did not perceive any such abrupt and sudden contrasts in your protege, Jem Deady," I said. "He has realized your ideas of a ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... to find the natural order in which these points should stand. Let no point, to the clear understanding of which some other point is necessary, precede that other. If developing all the points would make your theme too long, study to see what points you can omit without abrupt break ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... that Mrs. Vincent's study was down one flight of stairs and at the other end of the building, she became aware of the uproar and her conversation with Peggy came to an abrupt pause. Then both hurried into the hall to see the tails of Horatio Hannibal Harrison's coat vanishing up the broad stairway and to hear Fraeulein Hedwig wailing, "Oh ze house iss burning up and down I ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... road, where he stood pointing at what we could not possibly see, as it was hid by a promontory of rock. When we f reached the spot where he was stationed, we came full upon the view of Glenthorn Castle: it seemed to rise from the sea, abrupt and insulated, in all the gloomy grandeur of ancient times, with turrets and battlements, and a huge gateway, the pointed arch of which receded in perspective between the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... which was oddly abrupt, I said I liked her very much and thought she was more agreeable ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... be one of those rare exceptions, my dear boy, I can promise you that—Upon my soul!" with an abrupt change of both tone and manner, "I really believe it IS coming ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... because the hearers following the flow of words, and drawn, as it were, down the current of the oration, are then more competent judges, when that impetuosity ceases and gives time for reflection. There should not, therefore, be anything harsh nor abrupt in that ending, which seems calculated for the respite and recreation of the mind and ear. This, too, is the resting-place of the oration, this the auditor expects, and here burst forth all ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... residents who lived here were Isambard Brunel, the engineer; Bramah, of lock fame; Martin, the painter, who was visited by Prince Albert; and Whistler, the artist. Close by Lindsey Row the river takes an abrupt turn, making a little bay, and here, below the level of the street, is a little creeper-covered house where the great colourist Turner lived for many years, gaining gorgeous sky effects from the red sunsets reflected in the ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... Achill Head, and the northwestern and south-western coasts consist of ranges of magnificent cliffs, reaching a height of 800 ft. in the cliffs of Minaun, near the village of Keel on the south. The seaward slope of Croaghaun is abrupt and in parts precipitous, and its jagged flanks, together with the serrated ridge of the Head and the view over the broken coast-line and islands of the counties Mayo and Galway, attract many visitors ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... ten miles north-west. Box-tree flats, of more or less extent, were intercepted by abrupt barren craggy hills composed of sandstone, which seemed to rest on layers of argillaceous rock. The latter was generally observed at the foot of the hills and in the bed of the river; it had in most places been worn by ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... brought into close contact with the free virility of the ancient world, and emancipated from the thralldom of unproved traditions. The force to judge and the desire to create were generated. The immediate result in the sixteenth century was an abrupt secession of the learned, not merely from monasticism, but also from the true spirit of Christianity. The minds of the Italians assimilated Paganism. In their hatred of mediaeval ignorance, in their loathing of cowled and cloistered fools, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... would say that life was a pretty strenuous proposition here, while it lasted. Perhaps they were—" He stopped, then added: "What I can't understand is, how did it happen that their affairs came to such an abrupt end? And why ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... window and the buoyant, inspiring scene to the bed. Stooping over, she kissed the sleeping boy with an abrupt eagerness, and made a little awkward, hungry gesture of love over him, and her face flushed hot with the ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... thirty-seven dead behind, for Ropata gave no quarter, and had not his men loitered to plunder, Te Kooti, who, still lame, was carried off on a woman's back, must have been among their prizes. Pushing on to Ngatapa, Ropata found it a very formidable stronghold. The pa was on the summit of an abrupt hill, steep and scarped on two sides, narrowing to a razor-backed ridge in the rear. In front three lines of earthwork rose one above another, the highest fourteen feet high, aided and connected by the usual rifle-pits and covered ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... "It was abrupt," Mister Masters wrote to his mother, "but it was kind. When I had done blushing and scraping with my feet and pulling my forelock, we had the nicest little talk. And she remembered you in the old days at Lenox, and said why hadn't I told ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... of Age," is admired by his countrymen for its rapid succession of images (a little too mixed or abrupt on some occasions), its descriptive power, and its neatness ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... it too abrupt," he said; "I'll come to it gradually. There's a young lady that I'm now looking forward to spending the whole of ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... I have taken a little flat in Fifty-eighth Street. Seems a little abrupt, but she didn't want to be alone, and she hates hotels. We felt sure ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Abrupt and unprefaced as her speech was, it scarcely produced the effect she had expected it would. Her charge neither flinched nor reddened. He laid a weak, rough hand upon her dress with a feebly pleading touch. "Dunnot yo' turn agen me," he whispered: ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... events leading up to the examination of the Lucky Chance mine, it was considered best for a while to pursue very nearly the same line of conduct that had been followed for the last ten days, carefully avoiding any abrupt change which might attract attention. All necessary data had now been secured, and Houston felt that he could better afford to remain quiet for a brief time and reconnoiter the situation, than by any hasty move to excite further suspicion at ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... himself amid a solitude that was accentuated by the noises around, the abrupt turning of keys in the doors of the boxes, the thousand exclamations of an amused crowd. Then suddenly, the freshness of his luxurious surroundings, the Moorish lantern casting strange shadows on the brilliant silks of the divan and walls, reminded him of the ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... that evening, and next day the tragedy of the sheep was a thing of the past. No other circumstance of Hare's four months with the Naabs had so affected him as this swift inevitable sweeping away of the flock; nothing else had so vividly told him the nature of this country of abrupt heights and depths. He remembered August Naab's magnificent gesture of despair; and now the man was cheerful again; he showed no sign of his great loss. His tasks were many, and when one was done, he went on to the next. If Hare had not had many proofs of this Mormon's feeling he would have thought ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... fellows had gone through what I have done," answered Billy, and he gave, not for the first time, an account of the hardships he had endured, the weight he had carried on his shoulders, his hard fare, the steep hills he had climbed, and the abrupt descents down which he had had to ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... music now changes as we enter upon a long drinking-chorus, with solos by the two revellers, Hophni and Phinehas ("For everything there is a Season"). The change from the seriousness of the preceding numbers is very abrupt, and the music of the chorus is decidedly of the conventional Italian drinking-song character. Eli appears and rebukes them, and after a cantabile aria ("Thou shouldst mark Iniquities"), a short chorus of Levites, for tenors and basses, ensues, introducing a simple, but ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... scene ensued, and the abrupt announcement of the second marriage. The anguish and despair of the repudiated wife were portrayed with a vividness, a marvellous eloquence and passionate fervour that surpassed all former exhibitions of her genius, and the ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... walk, he replied, 'No, I cannot; you are telling me to do an impossible thing.' Although Monsieur Bernheim failed in this instance, I could not but admire his skill. After using every means of persuasion, insinuation and coaxing, he suddenly took up an imperative tone, and in a sharp, abrupt voice that did not admit a refusal, said: 'I tell you you can walk; get up.' 'Very well,' replied the old follow; 'I must if you insist upon it.' And he got out of bed. No sooner, however, had ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... there were other questions which Holmes would have wished to put, but the nobleman's abrupt manner showed that the interview was at an end. It was evident that to his intensely aristocratic nature this discussion of his intimate family affairs with a stranger was most abhorrent, and that he feared lest every fresh question would throw a fiercer light ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... purpose beyond that of "trying out" his engine, unless, indeed, the tough and rocky grade were a test. But Burns was still silent, and the other man applied himself to holding on. A mile up the road the car came to an abrupt standstill ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... at last when she thought they ought to get married, and when he saw her blush deeply, even to her neck, he regretted that he had been too abrupt. There was no hurry; she must decide that herself; no need to answer now, not ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... traits that every critic notes in Emerson's writing is that it is so abrupt, so sudden in its transitions, so discontinuous, so inconsecutive. Dislike of a sentence that drags made him unconscious of the quality that French critics name coulant. Everything is thrown in just as it comes, and sometimes the pell-mell is ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Vanderpool, looking at the tall, slim girl swaying toward them with a piled basket of white cotton poised lightly on her head. "Why," in abrupt recognition, "it is our Venus of the ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... cover of the trenches, I made my way in that direction. Several officers tried to persuade me not to go, but knowing it would make an excellent scene, I decided to risk it. On the side of the bank nearest our front line the ground sloped at a more abrupt angle, the distance from the trench to the outpost being about sixty yards. Rushing over the top of the parapet, I got to the edge of the grass road and crouched down. The water up to my knees, I made my way carefully along. Twice I stumbled over dead bodies. At last ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... much of the surface of the slate, punctuation being attended to, the i's dotted, and the t's crossed. In the second, when the communication was in answer to a question addressed to a Spirit the writing was clumsy, rude, scarcely legible, abrupt in terms, and sometimes very vague in substance. In short, one bore the marks of deliberation and the other of haste. This difference we found to be due to the different conditions under which the communications were written. The long messages are prepared by ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... feature in this case. And Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch aggravated that delusion as though he did it on purpose. Instead of laughing at her he began all at once treating Mile. Lebyadkin with sudden respect. Kirillov, who was there (a very original man, Varvara Petrovna, and very abrupt, you'll see him perhaps one day, for he's here now), well, this Kirillov who, as a rule, is perfectly silent, suddenly got hot, and said to Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, I remember, that he treated the girl as though she were a marquise, and that that was doing for her altogether. ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of the same kind of stones, so that they have been obliged to pile them up in walls on both sides of the railroad cut nearest the pond; and, moreover, there are most stones where the shore is most abrupt; so that, unfortunately, it is no longer a mystery to me. I detect the paver. If the name was not derived from that of some English locality—Saffron Walden, for instance—one might suppose that it was called originally ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... general unrest in the vain hope that they might some day regain their heritage. At least, we know one thing definitely: that the attempt on the life of the Emperor Chia Ching in the Peking streets at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century was a Secret Society plot, and brought to an abrupt end the pleasant habit of travelling among their subjects which the great Manchu Emperors K'anghsi and Ch'ien Lung had inaugurated and always pursued and which had so largely encouraged the growth of personal ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... a rickety fancy desk, began to write: "Dear James, my father passed peacefully away at—" Then, with an abrupt movement, he tore the sheet in two and threw it in the fire, and began again: "Dear James, my father died ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... least, she could not say that she did not understand. If the question was ever asked plainly, Bernard Dale had asked it plainly. Shall we be man and wife? Few men, I fancy, dare to put it all at once in so abrupt a way, and yet I do not know that the English language affords any better terms for ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... with hesitation and be resolved on any step which this very anxiety to have done with hesitation led him to believe a right one at the moment. This habit of mind showed itself in private as in public matters, and his children and I were often startled by abrupt decisions on home affairs announced very ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... tributaries of the Rappahannock, but the ravines on that side are not considerable. From the ridge occupied by the first line, the ground falls away to the east, until the valley of another branch of Lewis Creek is reached. The depression here is considerable, and gives an abrupt slope to the Fairview hill, which rises directly from it on the eastern side. From the first line of the creek, extends on both sides of the road a dense forest. From the latter point to Fairview heights, and to Chancellorsville, ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... the Frenchman was, he was not quick enough to quite conceal from the wife that his present obsequious manner had been suddenly assumed for her benefit directly she had entered the room. She had overheard voices, as she reached the landing, and the abrupt manner in which these sounds had ceased was not entirely natural. It had also seemed to her that the valet's tone had had a ring of familiarity about it which she had never known it to have before. Could it be possible that they were discussing ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... rock was near the surface, and in places came through, when the grass was changed for lichens and mosses. Through this rocky meadow now roamed, now rushed, now tumbled one of those Alpine streams the very thought of whose ice-born plenitude makes me happy yet. Its banks were not abrupt, but rounded gently in, and grassy down to the water's brink. The larger torrents of Winter wore the channel wide, and the sinking of the water in Summer let the grass grow within it. But peaceful as the place was, and merry with the constant ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... conversing with Junot about a quarter of an hour he quitted him and came towards me. I never saw him exhibit such an air of dissatisfaction, or appear so much under the influence of some prepossession. I advanced towards him, and as soon as we met, he exclaimed in an abrupt and angry tone, "So! I find I cannot depend upon you.—These women!—Josephine! —if you had loved me, you would before now have told me all I have heard from Junot—he is a real friend—Josephine!—and I ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... everywhere recur under different forms. The minor domes which flank the great dome of the cathedral of Florence enhance and reinforce the latter, and prepare the eye for a climax which would otherwise be too abrupt. The central pavilion of the Chateau Maintenon, with its two turrets, echoes the entire facade with its two towers. Like the overture to an opera, it introduces themes which find a more extended development elsewhere ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... for nearly a mile, when the howl of the hounds began to sound through the woods with more abrupt and fiercer echoes. We knew by this that the moose had been brought to bay, and we hurried forward, eager to have ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... this moment Mr. Force and Leonidas came in, talking eagerly, and their abrupt entrance startled the woman out of her slumber. She sat up, rubbed her eyes, yawned loudly, asked where she was, and expressed a suspicion that ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... insects, that had crawled from the water upon his clothes. During our journey that morning parallel with the valley of the Atbara, I had an excellent opportunity of watching the effect of the storm. We rode along the abrupt margin of the table land, where it broke suddenly into the deep valley; from the sides of this the water was oozing in all directions, creating little avalanches of earth, which fell as they lost their solidity from too much moisture. This wonderfully ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... observed that my last quarter was cut short in the middle; which untoward event arose from no arrogance or supercilious conceit on my part, as though I had perfected myself in the mysteries of pigeon-wing and balancez, but from the abrupt departure of the professor himself, who, true to the name indicative of his constitutional levity, found it convenient to disappear betwixt two days, with the advance pay of my whole term in his pocket, and without stopping to make even one ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... the mountains, where it was impossible to follow them.' Mr Darwin then describes the rugged ravines and forest-clad precipices, wilder than anything he had witnessed in the South American Andes or Cordilleras." Raiatea, Eimeo, and others in the Society group, are composed of vast and abrupt mountain ranges, rising almost abruptly from the sea, and having very little habitable ground, but all covered with the densest vegetation. The most stupendous volcanoes in the world are those of the Sandwich Islands, ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... that girl?" asked Count von Breitstein, in his usual abrupt manner, as the arm of Leopold girdled the slim waist of the Princess, and the eyes of Leopold drank light from another pair of eyes lifted to ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... of Charles, held a clerkship, with some considerable salary, in the South Sea House. I do not retain an agreeable impression of him. If not rude, he was sometimes, indeed generally, abrupt and unprepossessing in manner. He was assuredly deficient in that courtesy which usually springs from a mind at friendship with the world. Nevertheless, without much reasoning power (apparently), he had much cleverness of character; except when he ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... Walker, it was the latter who gave the signal for withdrawing to the lady of the house, by saying, "I think, Lady Thrum, it is quite time for us to retire." Some exquisite joke of Mr. Slang's was the cause of this abrupt disappearance. But, as they went upstairs to the drawing-room, Lady Thrum took occasion to say, "My dear, in the course of your profession you will have to submit to many such familiarities on the part of persons ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was so brilliantly adopted by Darwin, that changes occur by degrees, by "fine shades," by slow variations, as the result of successive adaptations, and that there is no jumping-off place in nature. On the contrary, life often passes suddenly from one form to another, by abrupt and capricious leaps, by irregular and disorderly steps, and it is in the egg that Fabre sees the first lineaments of these mysterious ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... strange yearning in the heart of man, in the way this other touches it. The great rhetorician found a rhetoric here that put his eloquence to silence and he responded to it with sentences as sharp, as brief, as broken, as abrupt, as stinging and wind-driven, as the rushing waves themselves pouring over a ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... feeling in his heart as if pitying tenderness had been the burden of the words it had spoken. Tones were still lingering in his ear, and with effect so soothing that he should probably have fallen asleep again; but in answer to it he heard another voice, so abrupt and stern that he started up wide awake, and, in an instant, was all attention. What passed between the invisible speakers, whom we shall distinguish as the "Stern Voice" and the "Soft Voice," ran, ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... mountains, which dominate the more immediate settling of Taahauku and give the salient character of the scene. They are reckoned at no higher than four thousand feet; but Tahiti with eight thousand, and Hawaii with fifteen, can offer no such picture of abrupt, melancholy alps. In the morning, when the sun falls directly on their front, they stand like a vast wall: green to the summit, if by any chance the summit should be clear—water-courses here and there delineated on their face, as narrow as cracks. Towards afternoon, the ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... alarm of his rector. He requested of the latter, that should he see Mrs. Temple, he would make no allusions to the circumstance, especially as she was at the period in question not far from her confinement, and it was impossible to say what unpleasant or dangerous effects an abrupt mention of so dreadful a circumstance ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... The abrupt command would probably have disconcerted most men and effectually spoiled the appeal they meant to make, and Clavering's face flushed as he recognized its ludicrous aspect. Still, he could not withdraw then, and he made the best ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... level valley with a river winding through it; it was the valley of the Treja. A precipice, hundreds of feet in height, falls perpendicularly upon the valley, from the site of Civita Castellana; there is an equally abrupt one, probably, on the side from which we saw it; and a modern road, skilfully constructed, goes winding down to the stream, crosses it by a narrow stone bridge, and winds upward into the town. After passing over the bridge, I alighted, with J——- and R——-, . . . . and ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... control over the national economy feel the bitterest regret that it had not been given them to obviate the possible dangers of such a crisis and such a change, or rather to prevent such a crisis and a change so abrupt, by exertions in every way, and on the widest scale, to rescue the people from their ignorance and barbarism, instead of trusting to it for an uncontested undisturbed continuance of their own domination? But they scorned the idea, if it ever occurred, that the many-headed, many-handed ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... abrupt and perilous rocks The man had fallen, that place of fear! At length upon the shepherd's mind It breaks, and all is clear: He instantly recalled the name, And who he was, and whence he came; Remembered too the very day On which the ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... couplets, with its hemistichs of equal length, is a very symmetrical and monotonous species of verse, and far better adapted for the expression of antithetical maxims, than for the musical delineation of passion with its unequal, abrupt, and erratic course of thoughts. But the main cause lies in a national feature, in the social endeavour never to forget themselves in presence of others, and always to exhibit themselves to the greatest possible advantage. It has been often remarked, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... such-like. In ten years it'll be a scare-crow of a countryside. I wish one could clear them up and burn them in heaps as one does the dead leaves in autumn." Fatigue fell upon her. She seemed exhausted by the manufacture of so much malice. With an abrupt and listless gesture she pointed her stick at the Castle. "It isn't much, you see," she said apologetically. And indeed there was little enough. There were just the two towers on the summit and the two on the slope of the hill whose ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... cried. "I shall save my credit at Court.—Gentlemen," he went on, with the utmost courtesy and bowing low, "his Majesty the King, disappointed with your abrupt leave-taking, has commanded me to escort you back ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... the fir-woods below were like a green sea, and white clouds above sailed along over the blue sky. The wildness of the region was, as it were, tamed by its uniformity and the simplicity of its elements. Nature, like a true poet, abhors abrupt transitions. Clouds, however fantastically formed they may at times appear, still have a white, or at least a subdued hue, harmoniously corresponding with the blue heaven and the green earth; so ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... creature did work slow in the brain, and in the end loost from me, abrupt, and went back with a leap, so that my hands did be ript from the throat of the Beast. And in one instant it did be back unto me, and gave me no moment to free the Diskos. But I made anew to fight, and ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... actions of this voyage, being full of pleasant variety." But, as well observed by the editor of Astley's Collection, Purchas has rather curtailed than abridged, often leaving out whole paragraphs and inserting others in an abrupt and unconnected manner, passing over places without any mention, and speaking of them afterwards as if they had been mentioned before. We have therefore used the farther liberty of still farther abridging his confused abridgment, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... singing, and the absence of any officer to call ''Vast hauling,' they continued operations until they broke the topsail yard in two, when the sight of the wreckage and the fear of consequences brought the singing to an abrupt conclusion. In my then ignorance I naturally asked: 'Why couldn't you have sung shanties without hoisting the topsail?' and the reply was: 'How could we sing a shanty without having our hands on the rope?' Here we have the whole psychology of the labour-song: the old ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... you won't see the old Puritan Sabbath," said Mrs. Makely, with an abrupt deflection from the question of the Sunday papers. "Though you ought to, up in these hills. The only thing left of it is rye-and-Indian bread, and ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... the flat where he was veering, abrupt and nearly hidden; but his eye caught the danger in time, and swinging from it leftward so that two wheels of the leaning coach were in the air, he faced the open again, safe, as the rescue swooped down upon him. The horsemen came at the ditch, a body of daring, ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... to drop here. But COMMERELL, having by this time had another question on other subject put and answered, collected his thoughts, rose and begged to say that "Prince Louis of BATTENBERG served under me, and a more efficient officer——" Here sentence came to abrupt conclusion. Angry cries of "Order!" stormed round gallant Admiral. COMMERELL a man of proved valour, as the Victoria Cross worn on his breast on Jubilee Day and other high festivities testifies. But his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various |
