"Sterner" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was made of sterner stuff—she was horribly shocked, her feelings had been bruised in their tenderest parts, the laws of convention had been ruthlessly broken by her niece, and forgiveness was ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... the single-hearted straightforwardness of the thoughts:—nor less, the limitation of subject to the many phases of one passion, which then characterised our lyrical poetry,—unless when, as with Drummond and Shakespeare, the "purple light of Love" is tempered by a spirit of sterner reflection. ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... decent nation would get into a passion about. Still, as the previous administration had gained much glory by completing the robbery of Texas from Mexico, Mr Polk has thought fit to illustrate his by an attempt to squeeze and bully the sterner majesty of England. Accordingly, in his message, he boasts of having offered less favourable terms than his predecessors; and these being of course rejected, retires with dignity upon the completeness of the American title, and intimates that the time is at hand ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... imprudent behavior, but on the whole surprisingly little advantage was taken of it. Among the third and fourth year students there was a certain amount of going to and from the trains in couples; some carrying of heavy books up the hill by the sterner sex for their feminine schoolmates, and occasional bursts of silliness on the part of heedless and precocious girls, among whom was Huldah Meserve. She was friendly enough with Emma Jane and Rebecca, but grew less and less intimate as time went on. She was extremely pretty, with a profusion ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... matter of fact this joke, in all its lights, was tolerably familiar to most of them by this time, but, either on its individual merits, or perhaps because it compared favourably with the sterner alternative of translating, it was periodically in request, and always met ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... the Fates remove Domestic peace, connubial love, The prattling ring, the social cheer, Affection's voice, affection's tear, Ye sterner powers, that bind the heart, To me your iron aid impart! O teach me when the nights are chill, And my fireside is lone and still; When to the blaze that crackles near, I turn a tired and pensive ear, And Nature conquering bids me sigh For love's soft accents ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... replaced by a broad-brimmed panama; his step was quick, his voice had a ring in it, the stern, determined expression was altogether gone; there was a loveliness in his face that was not in Miss Prudence's own; when his sterner and stronger nature became sweet, it was very sweet. Life had been a long fight; in yielding, he had conquered. He bubbled over into nonsense now and then. Twenty years ago he had walked this path with Prudence Pomeroy, when there was hatred in his heart and an overwhelming sorrow in hers. ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... he belonged. He doubtless held with perfect sincerity the distinguishing tenet of that sect, but he did not consider that tenet as one of high importance, and willingly joined in communion with pious Presbyterians and Independents. The sterner Baptists, therefore, loudly pronounced him a false brother. A controversy arose which long survived the original combatants. In our own time the cause which Bunyan had defended with rude logic and rhetoric against Kiffin and Danvers was pleaded by Robert Hall with an ingenuity ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... Felix: she was not of a very resolute character, being easily influenced by her sterner parents, whose patrician eyes looked askance upon the presumptuous lover's claims. Besides, Felix was absent—supposedly engaged in his laudable enterprise of wresting a fortune from the world—while Alfred, handsome, polished of manner, patient and persistently ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... inches high, and with more than the usual stoutness, possessed all the agility and perseverance of the Indian character. His carriage was dignified, his eye penetrating, his countenance, which even in death, betrayed the indications of a lofty spirit, rather of the sterner cast. Had he not possessed a certain austerity of manners, he could never have controlled the wayward passions of those who followed him to battle. He was of a silent habit; but when his eloquence became roused into action by ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... to lie loosely upon the soil, and in many cases were prevented from precipitating themselves into the valleys below merely by the support of the trees against which they reclined. Deep ravines, in various directions, gave an air of still sterner solemnity ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... He was not a man to linger much over the sweetness of a caress when sterner work was in his hands to be done. "Lady Lovel," he said, "you must see that this opposition is fruitless. Ask your cousin, Lord Lovel, and he will tell you ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... are behind us again. Once more I made a lot of revolushuns. Its no use sayin there wasnt nothin for me to change. Youre prejudiced. I can see falts where others cant. Underneath a plesant exterior I am made of sterner stuff, as the poets say. I have gave up frivolity with the exception of goin into town once in a while to take a bath. Im strong for this ...
— Dere Mable - Love Letters Of A Rookie • Edward Streeter
... fretted in your feet; We wondered could you tarry long, And brook for long the cramping street, Or would you one day sail for shores unknown, And shake from you the dust of towns, and spurn The crowded market-place—and not return? You found a sterner guide; You heard the guns. Then, to their distant fire, Your dreams were laid aside; And on that day, you cast your heart's desire Upon a burning pyre; You gave your service to the exalted need, Until at last from bondage freed, At liberty ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... all watching dragons, and make for him the sleeping beauties of his will? And, presto, there they are! and, oh! ye houris of the South, with what a smile and glance between the azure puffs! Well let me not forget myself. With a sterner morality he sees how the bending Bedouin fashions his pipe in the moistened ground; he sees the slender Indian reed with the flat bowls of Lahore and Oude, the pipe of the Anglo-eyed celestial, the red clay of Bengal, and ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... once at least, and had more than once had occasion to grieve over the boy's handling of the firm's money, and so had made his will entirely in his wife's favour, leaving his son dependent upon her good graces. The mother was disposed to be a little sterner than the father had been. Perhaps if young Barter had dreaded her less poor Bommaney's fallen notes might ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... if she wanted them, his immediate interest in MacNair cooled appreciably—not that MacNair was to be forgotten—merely that his undoing was to be deferred for a season, while he, the Pierre Lapierre once more of student days, played an old game—a game long forgot in the press of sterner life, but one at which ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... wish made known for some will do, And some a gentle frown would rue And feel extremely sad; While others need a sterner look, A reprimand, or sharp rebuke, ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... metaphors, moreover, are so mixed. I think,' said the Lion, 'it is high time I took the Miser in hand; he is capable of better things, and if success cannot give him the milk of human kindness, I must try what sterner measures can effect. Get down now,' continued the Lion, 'and both of you slip round the other side of the pedestal and hide yourselves. I expect the Miser to pass this way shortly, and you are not to interrupt ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... gentle lady, in battle men must needs fall or wherefore should battles be? Much have I seen of wars, lady, but ne'er saw eyes sterner fray than this—" ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... general he was a stranger still in town, and of the sort that draws the eye and provokes inquiry. Lady Mary, the only goal of whose shallow existence was the attention of the sterner sex, who loved to break hearts as a child breaks toys, for the fun of seeing how they look when broken—and who, because of that, had succeeded in breaking far fewer than she fondly imagined—looked up into his face with the "most perditiously alluring" eyes in England—so Mr. Craske, ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... son. In 1627 Alting was appointed to the chair of theology at Groningen, where he continued to lecture, with increasing reputation, until his death in 1644. Though an orthodox Calvinist, Alting laid little stress on the sterner side of his creed and, when at Dort he opposed the Remonstrants, he did so mainly on the ground that they were "innovators.'' Among his works are: —Notae in Decadem Problematum Jacobi Behm (Heidelberg, 1618); Scripta Pheologica Meidelbergensia (Amst., 1662); Exegesis ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... culled flowers, which are here presented, some of their perfume may chance to linger, it will probably serve to suggest their original attractiveness. That they may, in some capacity, be used to adorn the worship of Christ in our sterner clime, is the earnest ...
— Hymns from the Morningland - Being Translations, Centos and Suggestions from the Service - Books of the Holy Eastern Church • Various
... an eventful time. English manufacturers, not content with leveling mountains of American cotton bales, converting them into textile fabrics and clothing the world therewith, were reaching deep and deeper into the bowels of the earth, and pulling up sterner stuff to spin into gigantic threads with which to lace together all the provinces and cities of the realm. That captive monster, Steam, though in the early days of its servitude, was working well in harness, ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... Augustine had to save himself from his friends by tripping the good Prefect gently up, and leaving him miles behind the disputants, who argued on and on, till broad daylight shone in, and the sight of the desolation below recalled all parties to more material weapons, and a sterner warfare. ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... thinking of something else. While they paced up and down a walk screened from the Square windows by trees and shrubs already clothed in the tender, quivering foliage of spring, she kept silence for several seconds, looking straight before her with a sterner expression than he could yet remember to have seen on the face he adored. Presently she spoke in a hard, ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... then she stopped, arrested by her own word. How was it possible to present reality to eyes that looked out through such maze of ignorance and folly; it seemed easier to take up a sterner theme and comment upon the wickedness of disobedience and secrecy. Yet all the time her words missed the mark, because the true sin of these two pretty criminals was utter folly. Surely if the world, and their fragment ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... stark, rugged caverns; but those who came here and fortified this noble headland, in far-back days of which we can only dream, came not in search of the picturesque as we do, nor probably for the spiritual repose that we crave in this age of hurry. Even sterner necessities governed their existence. Cliff-camps of this nature cannot have been designed against any foe from the sea—even to-day it would be a perilous thing indeed to attempt a forcible landing at such places—they were more likely a last refuge from invading ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... Blanchard, among others, sympathised very heartily with the great disappointment that had now fallen upon Chris and her sweetheart. His sister's attitude had astonished both him and his mother. They fancied that Blanchards were made of sterner stuff; but Chris went down before the blow in a manner very unexpected. She seemed dazed and unable to recover from it. Her old elastic spirit was crushed, and a great sorrow ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... a driving wreck, And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck With anguish'd face and flying hair Grasping the rudder hard, Still bent to make some port he knows not where, Still standing for some false, impossible shore. And sterner comes the roar Of sea and wind, and through the deepening gloom Fainter and fainter wreck and helmsman loom, And he too disappears, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Porter called and, having shepherded him into the back room, put him relentlessly through his exercises. George's groans, as he moved his stout limbs along the dotted lines indicated in the book's illustrated plates, might have stirred a faint heart to pity. But Lora Delane Porter was made of sterner stuff. If George so much as bent his knees while touching his toes he heard of it ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... now a mere plutocratic oligarchy. Doubtless the public buys the wares of these men, for one reason or another. But there is no more reason to suppose that the public admires their politics than that the public admires the delicate philosophy of Mr. Crosse or the darker and sterner creed of Mr. Blackwell. If these men are merely tradesmen, there is nothing to say except that there are plenty like them in the Battersea Park Road, and many much better. But if they make any sort of attempt to be politicians, we can only point out to ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... my father had dedicated me to the Goddess of Science from before my very birth; that I might some day be better equipped than he for the pursuit, capture, and utilization of Nature's sterner secrets. There must be no dallying with light Muses. Alas! I ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... the room. Then all this emancipation is a decay, even as conservative-minded people say,—it's none the less a decay because we want it,—and the only thing to stop it is to stop it, and to have more discipline and more suppression and say to women and the common people: 'Back to the Sterner Virtues; Back to Servitude!' I wish I hadn't these reactionary streaks in my thoughts, but I have ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... were chosen for a year, and the highest appointments were those of captain, lieutenant, and ensign. Upon these civic guards rested the responsibility of maintaining the order and safety of the town. Sterner duties than these were theirs when in the late sixteenth century (1573), at the call of William of Orange, the various guilds formed themselves into volunteer companies to resist the Spanish. How well they acquitted themselves ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... gasp. She looked hard at her brother. Blair wore a cool smile, underneath which there was sterner hidden meaning. Then Margaret looked at Lane with slow, deep ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... of disadvantage to Caesar himself you accomplished: I mean in bringing him to love me, to honor me, to regard me as one of his friends. Of the many confidential communications which passed between us in those days, by word of mouth, by letter, by message, I say nothing, for sterner times followed. At the breaking out of the Civil War, when you were on your way toward Brundisium to join Caesar, you came to me to my Formian villa. In the first place, how much did that very fact mean, especially at those times! Furthermore, ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... President's order, the committee could have glanced briefly at current racial practices and automatically ratified Secretary Johnson's general policy statement. Indeed, this was precisely what Walter White and other civil rights leaders expected. But the committee was made of sterner stuff. With dedication and with considerable political acumen, it correctly assessed the position of black servicemen and subjected the racial policies of the services to a rigorous and detailed examination, the first to be made ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... of Scotia next climbed upon the back of the camel. Whether it was that natural pride of prowess which oft impels his countrymen to perseverance and daring deeds,—whether it was that, or whether it arose from a sterner power of endurance,—certain it is that Colin kept his seat longer than either of ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... I leave my native glen And tune my mountain-lay, To colder maids and sterner men Than o'er ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... joy of relief in the woman's voice rang through the room, stilling all else, and causing those who heard to forget for an instant the sterner purpose of their gathering. Fairbain bent over her, like a fat guardian angel, patting her shoulder, her eyes so blurred with tears as to be practically sightless, yet still turned questioningly upon Waite. The sheriff was first ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... stronger, sterner—who shall say? Perhaps the spirit of that master whom he had served, whom he had brought faithfully home that night in spring, for whom he had looked and listened all these weary months! There was something, indeed—for El Rey, the great, lay down to earth ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... Education was but a series of experiments to them all, and they all had a secret dread of spoiling the noble boy, who was the darling of their hearts. And, perhaps, this very intensity of love begot an impatient, unnecessary anxiety, and made them resolve on sterner measures than the parent of a large family (where love was more spread abroad) would have dared to use. At any rate, the vote for whipping carried the day; and even Ruth, trembling and cold, agreed that it must be done; only she asked, in a meek, sad voice, if she need be present (Mr Benson ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... introduction to serious warfare; but he had tougher work than this to go through before his career was over. To the east of Caen stretches a somewhat dreary country, which forms a striking contrast to the rich meadows and orchards of the Bessin, while it in no way approaches to the wildness of the sterner portions of the Cotentin. A range of hills of some height bounds the prospect to the north, and it was from that direction that William brought his forces to the field. The field itself is a sort of low plateau, sloping to the east, and bordered by a series of villages placed in what, if the height ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... ranged in serried order, attent on sterner noise, Stood stalwart Ethan Allen and his 'Green Mountain Boys' Two hundred patriots listening as with the ears of one, To the echo of the muskets that ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... application drew forth an even sterner rebuff, for the housewife, before Janice had said half of her speech, cried, "Be off with you, you Tory! think you I would give help ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... the terrible disaster that followed. There are two ways of fighting a savage or undisciplined enemy; the scientific way, such as is taught in staff colleges, and the unscientific way that is to be learned in the sterner school of experience. We English were not the first white men who had to deal with the rush of the Zulu impis. The Boers had encountered them before, at the battle of the Blood River, and armed only with muzzle-loading 'roers,' or elephant ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... one employment, and call its practitioners the Daughters of Joy. The artist is of the same family, he is of the Sons of Joy, chose his trade to please himself, gains his livelihood by pleasing others, and has parted with something of the sterner dignity of man. Journals but a little while ago declaimed against the Tennyson peerage; and this Son of Joy was blamed for condescension when he followed the example of Lord Lawrence and Lord Cairns and Lord Clyde. The poet was more happily inspired; with a better modesty he accepted ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fool of all, that I had never discovered it till now, when disgrace and ruin stared me in the face. It is easy enough to be contrite with the policeman at your heels. But I was yet to discover that real repentance is made of sterner stuff, and needs a hand that is stronger to save and steadier to direct than any which I, poor blunderer that I was, had as yet reached ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... among the spectators, or among the delegates who accompanied the banners inscribed "The Press," "Freethought," "Freedom for Labour," and so on. Involuntarily I thought, it is this element of frivolity among one half of the population that brings out a sterner element of resolution in the other half. The greater, the more general, this frivolity, the stronger and fiercer must be the passionate energy of those who would prevail against it. And through my brain there coursed reminiscences of the past ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... has passed away which witnessed the enormous abuses of Poor Law relief that existed, under the old English Poor Law, before 1834, and the rapid diminution of pauperism that was effected by the sterner administration ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... rendered a la mode by the restoration of the Bourbons, prevails; as well as a strict observance of deferential respect from the men towards the women, while these last seem to assume that superiority accorded to them in manner, if not entertained in fact, by the sterner sex. ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... stern and severe, and even looked a trifle nervous: such was the difference in their characters. Yet Jules knew, the Sergeant knew, all his comrades knew, that when it came to the pinch, when it came to close fighting, there was no one more to be trusted than the sterner of these two young fellows. Ducking now and again, for somehow he could not help it, turning his eyes anxiously every few minutes in the direction of the enemy, his fingers locking themselves about his rifle and toying nervously ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... forebodings of dawning trouble vanished quite. They were lost in the broad, sweet lights of friendship. By-and-by, when friendship's day was done, they might arise again, called by other names and wearing a sterner face. ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... flood of tears. In an hour, at the most, Dorothy would be her sunny self again, penitent, and wholly ashamed of her undignified outburst. By to-morrow she would have forgotten it, but Harlan, made of sterner clay, would remember ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... bitterly why a man may taste forbidden fruit again and again and go unpunished; and why a woman, so often set amid sterner temptations, was yet left so strangely unprotected: the one so quickly able to put an incident aside, and seek fresh fields for conquest; the other so terribly liable to be branded for life ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... can be little doubt that with a Greek audience this would count to him as a merit, and that the shifting of the centre of interest by Euripides from the sterner passions of heroes and of kings to this tenderer phase of human feeling would be felt even by those whom it charmed to be a declension from the height of the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... waiting for an invitation; for her legs seemed too weak to hold her. Her attitude was attentive, and her poise was graceful. For some minutes Horace arranged the papers on his desk, while Fledra peeped at him from under her lashes. He looked even sterner than when he had ordered Lon to leave the house, and his silence terrified her more than if he had scolded her. ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... moment. "It was a hard experience," said he, finally. "It seems odd to think that to some of us there was more peace on the war-path than at home, more rest in the field than in the fort. Perhaps the reason why one's sterner qualities were so constantly called into play was that not only in action but in all the surroundings of our daily life ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... a man of sterner stuff and jealous of his authority in the colonies as well as at home, continued the policy thus inaugurated and enlarged upon it. If he could have kept his throne, he would have bent the Americans under a harsh rule or brought on in his dominions a revolution like that which he precipitated at ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... hundred and fifty pounds a year when he was twenty-one. Many young men would have rested satisfied with so rapid an advancement, and would have devoted themselves to the amusements that are now considered so permissible to youth, but young Harman was made of sterner stuff, and it only spurred him to further efforts. He contrived to save a considerable proportion of his salary for some years, and at the age of twenty-seven he started, in association with a firm of flour millers, the International Bread and Cake Stores, which spread rapidly over the country. ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... to be found among the Puritans, but in the magnificent treatise on "Ecclesiastical Polity" by the churchman Richard Hooker. But the liberalism of this great writer, like that of Erasmus a century earlier, was not militant enough to meet the sterner demands of the time. It could not then ally itself with the democratic spirit, as Puritanism did. It has been well said that while Luther was the prophet of the Reformation that has been, Erasmus was the prophet of the Reformation that is ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... but to be dispelled— For here where I am cast, Such visions may not last, By sterner fancies quelled: Relentless Nemesis my doom hath sent— This ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... observed him in silence, saw, that his countenance was darker and sterner than usual. 'O could I know,' said she to herself, 'what passes in that mind; could I know the thoughts, that are known there, I should no longer be condemned to this torturing suspense!' Their breakfast passed in silence, till Emily ventured to request, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... There was a sterner manner on the Texan side of the Guadalupe. The watch at the fords was not relaxed, but Ned went back into the little town to carry the word to the women and children. Most of the women, like the men, were dressed in deerskin and they, too, volunteered to fight ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to the angels, Yet of a sterner and a sadder aspect, Of spiritual essence. Why do I quake? Why should I fear him more than other spirits Whom I see daily wave their fiery swords Before the gates round which I linger oft In twilight's hour, to catch a glimpse of those Gardens which are ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... the party in power, naturally bear the blame and are the objects of the discontent, which will certainly within a short time be turned upon any other government that may succeed them. That government must introduce sterner discipline rather than weaker, and the transport and other difficulties of the country will remain the same, unless increased by the disorder of a new upheaval and the active or passive resistance of many ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... and prohibit temptation if it rots great cities; intrench labor in sufficient bulwarks against that wealth which, without the tenfold strength of modern incorporations, wrecked the Grecian and Roman states; and, with a sterner effort still, summon woman into civil life, as re-enforcement to our laboring ranks, in the effort to make our civilization a success. Sit not like the figure on our ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... the Rabbi, and his tones trembled, and it seemed to him that the dead man's face grew sterner. "Because I wish thee to swear across the body of Chayah's father that thou wilt ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Mayrant's present plight. But my imagination had not soared to the height of Miss Josephine St. Michael's act of discipline. This, it must have been, that the boy had checked himself from telling me in the churchyard. What a character of sterner times was Miss Josephine! I thought of Aunt Carola, but even she was not quite of this iron, and I said so to Mrs. Gregory. "I doubt if there be any old lady left in the North," I said, "capable of such ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... a vain ambition, Or a little earthly matter Which they cannot settle better Than in war and deadly bloodshed, Or to gain an angry vengeance For some insult which appeareth To imagination hideous. Now we leave the sterner presence Of the earth and all its changes, And we take the wings of fancy, (Which is sister to poesy), Guided by the light of record Thereon mount, and fly, surveying, Far above the heights of knowledge. And ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... The son of a gaol-bird! He tore the photograph from its frame and threw it into the fire and watched it burn. As the paper writhed under the heat, the lips seemed to twist into sad reproach. He turned away impatiently. That romantic madness was over and done with. He had far sterner things to do than shriek his heart out over a woman in an alien star. He had his life to reconstruct in the darkness threatening and mocking; but at last he had truth for a foundation; on that he would build in ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... champion and you happened to displease her? She'd spank you! Think of being laid face downward firmly across a sinewy knee and beaten forty-love with one of those hard catgut rackets! The very suggestion is intolerable to a believer in the supremacy of the formerly sterner sex. ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... the sluice brings into action the sleeping waters of the lake, which it finally drains. Necessity invents arts and discovers means; and what necessity is sterner than that of civil war? Therefore, even war is not in itself unmixed evil, being the creator of impulses and energies which could not ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... OF EDGAR ALLAN POE. Newly collected, edited, and for the first time revised after the author's final manuscript corrections, by Edmund Clarence Stedman and George Edward Woodberry, with many portraits, fac-similes, and pictures by Albert Edward Sterner. ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... eye, And what hath nature, but the vast, void sky, And the thronged river toiling to the main? Oh! say not so, for she shall have her part In every smile, in every tear that falls, And she shall hide her in the secret heart, Where love persuades, and sterner duty calls: But worse it were than death, or sorrow's smart, To live without ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... after the manner of the dissolute Greeks, instead of sitting, as she had been taught to consider the only decent posture for a Roman maid or matron. Then the thought of her mission brought the blush surging to her cheeks, whence it receded, leaving them pale with a sterner resolve. Was not love of country the greatest virtue? It was time to school herself, to shrink at nothing in that cause. As she took her place, she noticed that the priest of Melkarth, who lay directly opposite, ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... his first repulse, he approached the pilot a second time; but he met with a second repulse;—he was answered—"Sir, I have been royal pilot on this coast for twenty-five years, and I ought to know where I am." The captain too, in a sterner manner then before, commanded Stewart to return to his watch. The lieutenant dared utter no further remonstrance, but with a heart, heavy with sad forebodings, busied himself to keep up the failing spirits of his men ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... crowding ballroom floors, but triumphant, cruel, proud, with throbbing drum-beat—steadying the tramp of weary feet over red battle fields. Its unswerving hurry, its terrible, calm excitement, brought before his vision long blue lines—the fixed faces sterner than death, with steady eyes and quickened breath—the nervous clutch of muskets, as the rattle of small arms and boom of cannon came nearer and nearer, the fluttering silken banners, the calm sunshine, and sweet May ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... seen before that. Some of the gentlemen would breakfast earlier, especially on hunting mornings; and on some occasions the ladies, when they came together, would find themselves altogether deserted by their husbands and brothers. On this day it was fated that Mr Bott alone should represent the sterner sex, and when Alice entered the room he was standing on the rug with his back to the fire, waiting till the appearance of some other guest should give him the sanction necessary for the commencement of his morning meal. ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... born in Virginia; a man of fine character, lacking none of the sterner stuff of the soldier, but blended with modesty and gentleness; universally popular in the army, which he joined in 1840 and continued in till his death, rising to be general of a division through gallantry ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... says he was ambitious, And Brutus is an honorable man. He hath brought many captives home to Rome, Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill: Did this in Csar, seem ambitious? When that the poor have cried, Csar, hath wept: Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: Yet Brutus says he was ambitious, And Brutus is an honorable man. You all did see, that, on the Lupercal, I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition? Yet Brutus says he was ambitious, And, sure, he is ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... grant of the customs was made for a year only. But the limitation at once woke the jealousy of Charles. He looked on it as a restriction of the rights of the Crown, refused to accept the grant on such a condition, and adjourned the Houses. When they met again at Oxford it was in a sterner temper, for Charles had shown his defiance of Parliament by promoting Montague, who had been released on bond, to a royal chaplaincy, and by levying the disputed customs without authority of law. "England," cried Sir Robert Phelips, "is the last monarchy that yet retains ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... says Miss Priscilla, with an air of self-defence. This thought, that she can actually be accused of having treated the sterner sex in a hardhearted fashion, is cakes and ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... judgment. But it will pass away if he be kept quiet. Only let him break forth again at no rate; for he is already far in her Highness's displeasure, and should she be again provoked, she will find for him a worse place of confinement, and sterner keepers." ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... entire line was ordered. Rodes led his old brigade in person. The Confederates seemed determined, for Jackson's sake, to carry and hold the works which they had twice gained, and out of which they had been twice driven; for, with "Old Jack" at their head, they had never shown a sterner front. ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... Possibly she never had displayed so many engaging qualities to her father; for concern on his account had begun to be active in her breast; and then her sympathies met with unusual encouragement through those which had been stirred up in the sterner bosom of the veteran. She had never been entirely at her ease with her parent, the great superiority of her education creating a sort of chasm, which had been widened by the military severity of manner he had acquired by dealing so long with beings who could only be kept in subjection by an unremitted ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... sterner as she set her teeth and bit her tongue before replying. Then she said with more brrrr than usual ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... Suffolk. And yet at this very juncture, Crabbe's poetic conscience smites him. It is not for him, he remembers, to deal only with the sweeter aspects, though he knows them to exist, of village life. He must return to its sterner side:— ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... Law has scattered into flight Those Drinks that were our sometime dear Delight; And still the Morals-tinkers plot and plan New, sterner, stricter ...
— The Rubaiyat of Ohow Dryyam - With Apologies to Omar • J. L. Duff
... you say, 'that is Paul.' Yes! it is Paul. But it is not Paul only; it is Paul's Master, and, I hope, your Master; for He not only spoke loving, gentle words to and about men, and not only was grace poured into His lips, but there is another side to His utterances. No one ever spoke sadder, sterner words about the real condition of men than Jesus Christ did. Lost sheep, lost coins, prodigal sons, builders of houses on the sand that are destined to be blown down and flooded away, men in danger of an undying worm ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... confessing himself to the Capuchins, and acknowledging all and more than all the truth, that he might purchase life with dishonour. In Spain he would assuredly have been enlarged, barring a term of penance in some convent. But our Parliaments were sterner: they felt bound to prove the greater purity of the lay jurisdiction. The Capuchins, themselves a little shaky in the matter of morals, were not the people to draw the lightning down on their own body. They surrounded Gauffridi, sheltered ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... than any history which is written in any book." The mistake that we make is to count up all the qualities which seem to promote our health and happiness, and to invent an anthropomorphic figure of God, whom we array upon the side which we wish to prevail. The truth is far darker, far sterner, far more mysterious. The darkness is his not less than the light; selfishness and sin are the work of his hand, as much as unselfishness and holiness. To call this attitude of mind pessimism, and to say that it can only end in acquiescence or despair, is a sin against truth. A creed ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... sight, and I was saddened. They moved to their singing, like some of Mason's or Frederick Walker's figures, with the free grace of living statues, and laughed as we drove by. And yet, with all their beauty, industry, sobriety, intelligence, these Italians of the northern valleys serve the sterner people of the Grisons like negroes, doing their roughest work at ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... become convinced of their own unfitness, recognise in time that they will be wise to abandon a career which must always be hazardous and difficult even to those who are successful, and cruel to those who fail. Let it be something far sterner and stronger than mere fancy that decides you to try your fortunes in ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... and pleasure. The graver self of one kind of Philistine likes business and money- making; his more relaxed self, comfort and tea-meetings. Of another kind of Philistine, the graver self likes trades' unions; the relaxed self, deputations, or hearing Mr. Odger speak. The sterner self of the [109] Populace likes bawling, hustling, and smashing; the lighter self, beer. But in each class there are born a certain number of natures with a curiosity about their best self, with a ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... "exulting and abounding" rival. Winding around the curving hills, the scene is constantly varied, and the little willowed islets clasped in the embrace of the stream, mingle a trait of softened beauty with its sterner character. ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... that tender interest in household details, in the minutiae of domestic life, which relaxes the intellect while softening the heart. Hard and vigorous, her sentences came forth in eternal appeal to the reason, or address to the sterner passions in which love has no share. Beside this strong thinker, poor Susan's sweet talk seemed frivolous and inane. Her soft hold upon Mainwaring loosened. He ceased to consult her upon business; he began to repine that the partner of his lot could have little ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... as soon as she left Truedale, her mind turned to sterner matters close at hand. She became aware before long of some one near by. The person, whoever it was, seemed determined to remain hidden but for that very reason it called out all the girl's cunning and cleverness. It might be—Burke Lawson! With this thought Nella-Rose gasped a little. ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... spoke a dark form stepped from a doorway into the corridor in front of them. Marie retreated several steps; but her little escort proved that he was made of sterner stuff. He placed himself valiantly in front of his young mistress, laid his gun against his cheek, and aiming directly for the stranger's breast, said, in a ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... in the sunshine afar-off; you are not working to scrape together wealth for another man; you are independent, self-reliant, labouring in your own cause—the daring ambition which had once counselled thus, sank dead within me at last. The strong, stern spirit was beaten by spirits stronger and sterner ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... down on the lounge and laughed till there were tears in her eyes. Uncle Chris might be responsible for this disaster, but he was certainly making it endurable. However greatly he might be deserving of censure, from the standpoint of the sterner morality, he made amends. If he brought the whole world crashing in chaos about one's ears, at least he helped one to smile ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... hailed thy newborn light! Ah! little thought the peasant then, who blest The peaceful hour of consecrated rest, And heard the rustic Temple's arch prolong The simple cadence of the hallowed song, That the same sun illumed a gory field, Where wilder song and sterner music pealed; Where many a yell unholy rent the air, And many a hand was raised,—but ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... was in the air a good bit just then, for the big Oakshott covers ran half a mile from Little Silver and there had been a lot more trouble than usual that winter and the old head-keeper dismissed and a younger and sterner man engaged from up North. But the robbery went on and there's no doubt a lot of pheasants slipped away to an unknown market. Joseph Ford was so keen as the game-keepers to lay the rogues by the heels, ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... he had contracted by an accidental fall from his horse. His slow and cautious speech seldom declared the deep purposes of his soul; he disdained to imitate the luxury of the vanquished; but he indulged the sterner passions of anger and revenge. The ambition of Genseric was without bounds and without scruples; and the warrior could dexterously employ the dark engines of policy to solicit the allies who might be useful to his success, or to scatter among his enemies the seeds ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... of Parsons, he was appointed to the Jesuit Mission to England, where he landed on July 7th. It is said that he was so remarkably amiable and gentle that Aquaviva, the General of the Jesuits, objected to his appointment on the ground that the post required a man of sterner and more unyielding character. Bellarmine records that his sanctity of life was incomparable; but Jesuits are apt to entertain peculiar notions of sanctity. As was then usual, Garnet on coming to his native country adopted a string of aliases—Walley, ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... may the sterner virtues know, Determined justice, truth severe; But female hearts with pity glow, And women holds affliction dear; For guiltless woes her sorrow flows, And suffering vice compels her tear; 'Tis hers to soothe the ills below, And bid life's fairer ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... disenchanted. His work is more joyous than Merimee's, if not so vigorous and compact, and his delight in it is less disguised. Even in the Cardinal sketches there is nothing that leaves an acrid after-taste, nothing corroding—as there is not seldom in the stronger and sterner ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... smiles; but I know, too, it can frown and play the tyrant, if it be so disposed. Notwithstanding the softness which it now assumes, and the care with which it conceals its giant proportions beneath the deceitful drapery of sentiment, when it next appears before you it may show itself with a sterner countenance and in more awful dimensions. It is, to speak the truth, sir, a power of colossal size—if indeed it be not an abuse of language to call it by the gentle name of a power. Sir, it is a wilderness of power, of which fancy in her happiest mood ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... for the last time, up the road to Sheerness. Nothing moved upon it. He was rid of Mrs. Hallam, if face to face with a sterner problem. He had a few pence over ten shillings in his pocket, and had promised to pay the man four times as much. He would have agreed to ten times the sum demanded; for the boat he must and would have. But he had neglected to conclude ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... dwelt in the lad something which leaped in response to the clarion call of beauty, Lescott had read in that momentary give and take of their eyes down there in the hollow earlier in the afternoon. But, since then, the painter had seen the other and sterner side, and once more he was puzzled and astonished. Now, he stood anxiously hoping that the boy would permit himself further expression, yet afraid to prompt, lest direct questions bring a withdrawal again into the shell of taciturnity. After a few moments ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... name was Realization. Endowed with this immortal gift, they no longer groveled, for they knew what was passing around them—knew what part they were playing in the great drama, Life. And when she turned her happy face toward them they waxed merry, but when they saw her sterner ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... it speak always of restlessness and change. Some find a stimulus beside the sea, and say it brings forgetfulness. Rather let us call it exaltation. Much more than of a petty excitement, fit to blot a man's momentary woes, it speaks in a sterner and a stronger note. It throbs with the pulse of a further shore. It speaks of a quiet tide making out to the Fortunate Islands, and tells of a way of following gales, and of a new Atlantis, somewhere on beyond. How dear this dream of a different land, this story of Atlantis, pathetically sought! ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... took a sterner and a darker hue. The sight of the animal wearied him, and he flung it contemptuously aside. It disappeared in the direction of the ramparts; and almost at the same moment he heard a slight sound, resembling the falling of several minute particles of brick or light stone, which seemed ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... readers were made familiar with the real start in working life made by Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton. Back in the old High School days Reade and Hazelton had been fitting themselves to become civil engineers. They began their real work in the east, and had made good in sterner work in the mountains ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... wireless telegraph and telephone, refrigerating apparatus, and everything to make the owner and his guests comfortable. But her beautiful furnishings were tumbled this way and that in preparation for the sterner duties that lay before her. The lower deck was cumbered with sacks of coal lashed down. A transatlantic voyage in January is likely to be a lively one for a yacht of ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... experience, and even defied the Mystery of the White Wolf, at perhaps more risk to myself than at the time I had imagined. For, as I found afterwards, there were those among the company at the Swan that night of sterner mould and more ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... added an onlooker of the sterner sex, "'tis a runaway match, I'll warrant me. These ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... Moffat's offer, though she did not pretend to any romance of affection. And, having so said, she went to work with considerable mental satisfaction, choosing furniture, carriages, and clothes, not extravagantly as her mother would have done, not in deference to sterner dictates of the latest fashion as her aunt would have done, with none of the girlish glee in new purchases which Beatrice would have felt, but with sound judgment. She bought things that were rich, for her husband ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... Gordon brought kindness and conciliation into play, the settlement of the region entrusted to his care called for sterner measures, and he was not the man, with all his nobility of character and overflowing supply of the milk of human kindness, to refrain from those vigorous and decisive measures that keep turbulent races in subjection, and advance the cause of civilization, which in so many quarters ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... hurrying down the trough. The diversion might enable the Camel Corps to escape. But the ground was bad; the enemy's force was overwhelming; the Egyptian troopers were prepared to obey—but that was all. There was no exalted enthusiasm such as at these moments carries sterner breeds to victory. Few would return. Nevertheless, the operation appeared inevitable. The Camel Corps were already close to the river. But thousands of Dervishes were running swiftly towards them at ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... that we survey from the borders of this rock-hemmed, forest-girt lake, one perspective after another with varying gradations of colour making us realize the many-featured, chequered area spread before us. From this coign of vantage are discerned alike the sterner and the more smiling beauties of the forest, rocky defiles, gloomy passes, sunlit lawns and mossy dells, scenery varied in itself and yet varying again with the passing hour and changing month. And such suggestion of almost infinite variety ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... their guardians!" laughed Cousin Clare. "They have to stick to those to whom the law assigns them. Cheer up! You might have a far sterner one than Mr. Bowden, and a much more disagreeable school than Chilcombe. You've the summer term to look forward to when ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... most I want a spirit of content To work where'er thou'lt wish my labor spent, Whether at home or in a stranger's clime, In days of joy or sorrow's sterner time; I want a spirit passive to be still, And by thy power to do ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... garrison to depart; the officers and soldiers promising not to serve the King of Spain on the Netherland side of the Rhine for six months. They were to take their baggage, but to leave arms, flags, munitions, and provisions. Both Maurice and Lewis William were for insisting on sterner conditions, but the States' deputies and members of the council who were present, as usual, in camp urged the building of the golden bridge. After all, a fortified city, the second in importance after Groningen of all those regions, was the real prize contended for. The garrison ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... forward, could by any possibility be like the person for whom he was named. It was not an agreeable face, yet it drew her gaze with an irresistible attraction. She was convinced that on occasion the heavy brows contracted and the eyes grew even sterner. ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... before supper," replied the Parson; and unconsciously his lips took on a sterner line. He was building much on that evening's "Crying the Neck," which for the first time Ishmael was to attend, and at the succeeding supper Boase meant him to take his place at the head of the table, as future master of Cloom. "Crying the Neck" ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... its intent. It is known that before the anti-Omaric uprising in Naishapur, and even during his errant tour through Persia, the younger Omar was socially lionized,, becoming much sought after. It may seem improbable that Omar, Jr., as a member of the sterner sex, should have been admitted as a regular frequenter of women's clubs, but it must be remembered that then, even as in our own day, men were eagerly prized as lecturers on subjects of interest to women. Omar, Jr., appeared for several seasons ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... hundred and fifty are either wholly or partly Burns's, the small proportion written before him are decidedly far superior in value to those written after him; a discouraging fact, though not difficult to explain, if we consider the great social changes which have been proceeding, the sterner subjects of thought which have been arising, during the last half-century. True song requires for its atmosphere a state rather of careless Arcadian prosperity, than of struggle and doubt, of earnest looking forward to an unknown future, and ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... ends in the orthodox manner, to the sound of wedding bells—Miss Granger's—who swears to love, honour, and obey Thomas Tillott, with a fixed intention to keep the upper baud over the said Thomas in all things. Yet these men who are so slavish as wooers are apt to prove of sterner mould as husbands, and life is all before Mrs. Tillott, as she journeys in chariot and posters to Scarborough for her unpretentious honeymoon, to return in a fortnight to a bran-new gothic villa on the skirts of Arden, where one tall tree ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... a severe indictment of the voluntary system of recruiting, although sterner measures at the outset were a political impossibility. The free-will enlistment plan had to be given a thorough test, and its inadequacy demonstrated and repeatedly emphasized before public opinion would support ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... had rather a hard time of it during Mr. Granger's honeymoon, and were driven through Kings and Chronicles at a more severe pace than usual. The hardest and driest facts in geography and grammar were pelted like summer hail upon their weak young brains, and a sterner demand was made every day upon their juvenile powers of calculation. This Miss Granger called giving them a solid foundation; but as the edifice destined to be erected upon this educational basis ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... wretchedness proceeded. That which can only do what it has always done, pollute and degrade, must not be employed to purify and elevate. The lower their character and condition, the louder, clearer, sterner, the just demand for immediate emancipation. The plague-smitten sufferer can derive no benefit from breathing a little longer ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the gates,—the fields have drunk enough The time demands a Muse of sterner stuff; No more one bard, exempt from vulgar throng, May sing through Roman towns the Ascraean song, Or court in Learning's elmy bowers relief From individual shame or general grief: Silence is music ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... susceptibility to ridicule, his vanity is always greater, can surmount it, and find a gratification where a sterner nature would have felt only mortification. In a scene of an opera where a crowd is to be represented, he edges himself upon the stage. He is very conscious of the ill condition of his attire: the confirmation coat did but just hold together; and he did not dare to hold himself upright lest he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... sat silent. 'Twas as if the shadow of a sterner life had come over their young gaiety. Elspeth did not look at me, but sat with cast-down eyes, plucking feverishly at a rose. The ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... to her, that he was being hurt, and that he was very far from sweeping triumphantly over Albert Parsons. He had not allowed himself time to recover from his first battle, and his blows were slow and weary. Albert, moreover, was made of sterner stuff than Ted. Though now a peaceful tender of cows, there had been a time in his hot youth when, travelling with a circus, he had fought, week in, week out, relays of just such rustic warriors as Tom. He knew their methods—their headlong rushes, their swinging blows. They were ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... on Carmel cowed, if it did not convince, Ahab, so that he did not oppose the slaughter of the Baal prophets; but Jezebel was made of sterner stuff, and her passionate idolatry was proof against even a sign from heaven. Obstinacy in error is often a rebuke to tremulous faith in God. She fiercely puts her back to the wall, and defies Elijah and his God. Her threat to the prophet has a certain audacity of frankness ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Though sterner memories might fade, You never could forget The child-form of that baby-maid, The ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... Sterner times were fast approaching, and the nation was now fully divided by those factions which produced the revolution. The officers of Bonaparte's regiment were also divided into royalists and patriots; and it is easily to be imagined, that the young and friendless stranger ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... confidence) something supposed to be unknown to the general public, that the match between Sir Peregrine and Lady Sarah had been effected in spite of the Duke. The report was that there had been an elopement, and it was naturally supposed that the party of the sterner sex bad been the most active agent in the affair. To say the truth, however, in this instance it was the lady who precipitated matters. The affair occurred at Paris, soon after the Waterloo campaign. The Duke's final determination against Sir Peregrine's ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine |
