"Sturdiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... can—and the more servile the imitation, the better we like him—as a woman writes like a man as nearly as she possibly can, for he is the standard. What is there in Irving, that is not wholly and purely English? And so of Cooper; his sturdiness and vigor are those of a genuine Englishman, and when they write of American subjects, they write as an Englishman would; and if better, it is because they are ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... on that clause of the Bill, which restricted the Regent from granting places or pensions in reversion, Mr. Sheridan is represented as having attacked Lord Thurlow in terms of the most unqualified severity,—speaking of "the natural ferocity and sturdiness of his temper," and of "his brutal bluffness." But to such abuse, unseasoned by wit, Mr. Sheridan was not at all likely to have condescended, being well aware that, "as in smooth oil the razor best is set," ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... tricks, conjurings and miracles, which Faust performs with Mephistopheles' help, has any relation to the deeper meaning of life. From the compact on to the end hardly anything happens which brings Faust inwardly nearer either to heaven or hell. But there is a sturdiness of character and stirring intensity of action, with a happy admixture of buffoonery, through it all. And we feel something of the pathos and paradox of human passions in the fearful ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... come and work for me," he urged, "my work is mostly pretty," he apologised, with blacksmith sturdiness, "—not making horseshoes, but cutting out delicate things, ornamental iron work for aesthetic purposes, and all that ... all you'll have to do will be to swing the hammer gently, while I direct the blows and ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... systematic and correct they aim at being in all their productions of a graver cast! 'If the French have a fault,' as Yorick said, 'it is that they are too grave.' With wit, sense, cheerfulness, patience, good-nature, and refinement of manners, all they want is imagination and sturdiness of moral principle! Such are some of the contradictions in the character of the two nations, and so little does the character of either appear to have been understood! Nothing can be more ridiculous indeed than the way in which we exaggerate each other's ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... his words. He was old, seamed with lines, fallen away from his robust sturdiness. She suddenly seemed unable to bear all this weight of pitifulness—his, hers, the world's outside them. At first she had resolved to keep the real cause of her illness secret. But now his devastated ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... appreciation shown in these stories of the dominant national traits, whether commendable or otherwise: German contentiousness, stubbornness, envy, jealousy and Schadenfreude, i.e., the malicious joy over calamities that befall others, are impartially balanced against German self-reliance, sturdiness, love of truth, sense of duty, sincerity, unselfishness, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... directly answering, only blinked in support of her sturdiness. "My dear, in what a tone you ask that! ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... bulk about the china-shop with such quaintness, with such engaging sturdiness of character, strangely displaying all the time so unique a wisdom of that world that lies outside and encloses all china-shops, so unparalleled a genius of common sense, oddly linked with that good old-time quality called "the fear of God," that in his case we felt that the ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... to time he found himself thinking, instead of practical matters, of the astonishing sturdiness of spirit ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... played at tennis, and we perfected the game Which astonished swaggering Spaniards when the fat Armada came. And possession did he give us of our souls in sturdiness; And he gave us peace from priesthood: and he gave us ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... lay a little way out of the town, and after a day's sight-seeing we were to meet or mingle with troops of wholesome-looking workmen whose sturdiness and brightness were a consolation after the pale debility of labor's looks in Sheffield. From the chocolate-factories or the railroad-shops, which are the chief industries of York, they would be crossing the bridge of the Ouse, the famous stream on which the Romans had their town, and which suggested ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... out her confused confession of that strange double nature which so many Quadroons seem to owe to their mixed blood; a strong side of deep feeling, ambition, energy, an intellect rather Greek in its rapidity than English in sturdiness; and withal a weak side, of instability, inconsistency, hasty passion, love of present enjoyment, sometimes, too, a tendency to untruth, which is the mark, not perhaps of the African specially, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... we could chance upon a saeter, this meant passing the night upon the mountain. Michael and I looked at the guide, but though, with characteristic Norwegian sturdiness, he put a bold face upon it, we could see that in that deepening darkness he knew no more than we did. Wasting no time on words, we made straight for the nearest point of descent, knowing that any human habitation must be ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... cry at Robins's the auctioneer's, after a splendid dinner, full of great names and high spirits. I had the honour of sitting next to Sheridan. The occasion of his tears was some observation or other upon the subject of the sturdiness of the Whigs in resisting office and keeping to their principles: Sheridan turned round:—'Sir, it is easy for my Lord G. or Earl G. or Marquis B. or Lord H. with thousands upon thousands a year, some ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... as frail as a dream for all its vigorous growth which reaches sometimes six feet. If you pluck it it withers before you can get it home to put in water and its jewels shrivel to nothing on the way. Turtle-head is far different and I like it for its sturdiness, but most of all I like it because it is the hast of a small friend of mine, the Baltimore butterfly. In summer you may see this little fellow, a plaid of yellow and orange on black, the Baltimore colors, whence his name, flitting about, ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... the waste of public money is a crime against the citizen, and the contempt of our people for economy and frugality in their personal affairs deplorably saps the strength and sturdiness of ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... for mastery. Then grieve not, jolly team! though tough The road we travel, steep, and rough; [22] Though Rydal-heights and Dunmail-raise, 140 And all their fellow banks and braes, Full often make you stretch and strain, And halt for breath and halt again, Yet to their sturdiness 'tis owing That side by side we still are ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... English Quakers, and Baptists, had been working their way southward from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and had settled in the fertile country west of the Blue Ridge. Daniel Morgan, who had won the most brilliant battle of the Revolution, was one of these men, and sturdiness was a chief characteristic of most of them. So long as these frontier settlers served as a much-needed bulwark against the Indians, the church saw fit to ignore them and let them build meeting-houses and carry on religious services as they pleased. But when the peril of ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... eye; and not one drop of water to give freshness to the prospect. But with the operations of magic Rodogune had delighted to supersede the parsimony of nature. She caused the tree and the shrub to spring forth in the richest abundance; the sturdiness of whose trunks, or the deepness of their verdure, cheated the eye with the semblance of the ripening hand of time. She sprinkled the turf, short, fine, and vivid, with flowers both native and exotic. ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... encounter, though he mitigated it. The iron jaws clanged shut, but in the slack of the victim's sturdy jeans, instead of in the flesh. The massive mouth was locked vise-like. Because of the cloth's sturdiness, the dog swung clear of the floor. The girl still strove frantically, though vainly, at the leash, shrieking commands which were unheeded. Zeke, confused, chagrined, ashamed, wrathful, shook himself violently to be free, without avail. The other passengers ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... did not; and he took courage. It is so easy to find courage in those battles where we take no bodily harm! If conscience, sharpened by the severe discipline he had known, pricked him awkwardly at the first, he bore the stings with a good deal of sturdiness. A sinner, no doubt,—that he knew long ago: a little slip, or indeed no slip at all, had ranked him with the unregenerate. Once a sinner, (thus he pleasantly reasoned,) and a fellow may as well be ten times a sinner: a bad job anyhow. If in his moments of reflection—these being not yet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... from the standpoint of the private soldier, with the soldier's usual little growl over conditions that affect his comfort; yet, throughout the narrative, there is evidence of strong integrity of purpose, of religious feeling and of sturdiness befitting a good soldier. ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... one of those capable and intelligent women who are apt to develop sturdiness if they do not marry and have children. Susan had not married, and at the age of forty-nine and nine months she was sturdy. She wore coats and skirts whenever they could be worn, and some people professed to believe that she slept in them. Her one extravagance was the wearing of white ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... czar's armies was that day by day, week by week, from every corner of the empire, men went to the front. It was not the sudden concentration of Germany, it was not the eager formation of France, it was not the heroic sturdiness of Belgium, it was not the accustomedness to active service of the British regulars, it was a gradual transition of an idealistic people ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... great step forward. All my preparations, without distinction, are horribly virulent. Let the reader judge. I select as my first patient the sacred beetle, Scarabaeus sacer, who thanks to his size and sturdiness, lends himself admirably to an experiment of this kind. I operate upon a dozen, in the corselet, on the breast, on the belly and, by preference, on one of the hind legs, far removed from the impressionable nervous centers. No matter what part my injector attacks, the effect produced ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... lack of better, such miserable specimens of humanity! Jacob have I loved! ... David a man after my heart; the one a poor, mean, calculating man, who had, however, that single glimmer of the supernatural which Esau, for all his genial sturdiness, was without; the other an adulterous murderer, who yet had grace enough for real contrition. Hitherto He has been content with so little. He has accepted vinegar ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... threatening? There is much in the incident to give color to such a supposition. Perhaps a man of such fineness as He could be checked back by consideration for His mother's feelings. They were quite capable of pulling any wire to shut Him up, however ignorant they showed themselves of the simple sturdiness of true character. But the same man who so tenderly provides for His mother in the awful pain of hanging on a cross reminds her now that a divine errand is not to be hindered by nature's ties; that clear vision of duty must ever hold the reins of ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... in the alembic and resolved into its constituent parts. All accounts go to show that from very childhood Henry George was singularly direct and true. His ancestry was Welsh, Scotch and English in about equal proportions, and the traits of the middle class were his, even to a theological sturdiness that robbed his mind of most of its humor. Reformers must needs be color-blind, otherwise they would never get their work done—they see red or purple and nothing else. Born in Philadelphia in Eighteen Hundred Thirty- nine, on Tenth Street, below Pine, in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... are dark, and what we consider ugly, though it is quite possible that in their eyes we ourselves are hideous. Then they are short—a five-foot Lapp would be almost a giant—but what they lack in stature they make up in sturdiness; for, although spare of body, probably no men in the world can do a longer day's work, or survive greater hardships. Dirty they are certainly, since they never change their clothes and seldom comb their hair; yet, for all that, they are perfectly ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... slow growth and was always marked by a certain English sturdiness, which is one of the reasons why it is more easily used in our modern houses. It began in the time of Henry VIII and lasted through the Tudor and ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... of the Tuata De Danaan, gave such account of the fierceness and strength of Sreng, and the weight and sturdiness of his weapons, that the hearts of the golden-haired newcomers misgave them, and they drew away westward to the strip of land that lies between the lakes of Corrib and Mask. There, tradition tells us, they made an encampment upon the hill of Belgadan, near the stream that flows through caverns beneath ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... "genial." He was not aggressive; in his nature he was wholly unpartisan, and full of lenient charity; and I suspect that his kindly regard of the world, although returned with kindly liking, cost him something of that respect for sturdiness and force which men feel for writers who flout them as fools in the main. Like Scott, he belonged to the idealists, and not to the realists, whom our generation affects. Both writers stimulate the longing for something better. Their creed was short: "Love God and honor the King." It is a very good ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... so daring as to claim that Webster was a Christian. Neither was he a freethinker. He inherited his religious views from his parents, and never considered them enough to change. He simply viewed religion as a part of the fabric of government, giving sturdiness and safety to established order. His own spiritual acreage was left absolutely untilled. His services were for sale; and so plastic were his convictions that once having espoused a cause he was sure it was right. Doubtless it is self-interest, as Herbert Spencer says, that makes ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... whose fame now rests on the suffrages of child readers, Andersen seems at first to have felt that the Tales were slight and beneath his dignity. They are not all of the same high quality. Occasionally one of them becomes "too sentimental and sickly sweet," but the best of them have a sturdiness ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... when not wearing steel helmets in the trenches or on the firing-line. The Australians were in slate-colored uniform and they wore looped-up soft hats. The hats accentuated the manner, the height and the sturdiness of the men whose physique was unsurpassed at the British front, and practically all were smooth-shaven. For generations they had had adequate nutrition and they had the capacity to absorb it, which generations from the slums may lack even if the ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... the Hankow, was the net result of long ship-building experience. Dozens of apparently seaworthy boats have gone up the Yangtze-Kiang, not to return. After years of experiment a somewhat satisfactory river-boat has been evolved. It combines the sturdiness of a sea-going tug with the speed ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... at the time of the Crimean War, I had been interested in the Finnish peasants whom I saw serving on the gunboats. There was a sturdiness, heartiness, and loyalty about them which could not fail to elicit good-will; but during this second stay in Russia my sympathies with them were more especially enlisted. During the hot weather of the first summer ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... of plaster and made the metal reverberate. While Nelson and Alden shrank flat against the far wall, a scarlet tongue at least four feet long flicked the air but a few feet from their bloodless, sweating visages. Becoming irritated at the sturdiness of the barrier, the mountainous reptile tugged harder and hissed, filling the cell with a foul exhalation that stank like ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... sturdiness that weaker vessels adore). Irrevocably. Mabel, if the dog-like devotion of a lifetime ... (He becomes conscious that something has happened to LOB'S leer. It has not left his face but it has shifted.) He is ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... each should seek to assist his neighbors who may be less fortunate; that each industry should assist its own employees; that each community and each State should assume its full responsibilities for organization of employment and relief of distress with that sturdiness and independence which ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... all her youth, Polly had quite a character of her own; and even thus early her husband sometimes ran up against a certain native sturdiness of opinion. But this did not displease him; on the contrary, he would have thanked you for a wife who was only an echo of himself. To take the case of the animals. He had a profound respect for those creatures to which speech has been denied; and he treated ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... Homer started, but I believe it was the sea at Prout's Neck that taught him most. I think that William Morris Hunt and Washington Allston must have seemed like infant Michelangelos then, for there is still about them a sturdiness which we see little of in the American art of that time, or even now for that matter. They had a certain massive substance, proving the force of mind and personality which was theirs, and while these men were proving the abundance and warmth of themselves, Homer was the frozen one among ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... such persons there is a kind of association between what is easy and what is wrong on the one hand, and between what is difficult and what is right on the other. Our early Puritans were men of this type, and there is much to admire in the sturdiness with which they crushed their impulses in the resolve to carry out their ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... study as a witness to her prowess as a Diana. Many a time she had fished the river in waders and brought back with her to the ranch a creel full of trout. Years in the untempered sun and wind of the southwest had given her a sturdiness of body unusual in a girl so slenderly fashioned. The responsibility of large affairs had added to this an independence of judgment that would have annoyed Don Manuel if he had ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... ancestors, and these he cannot shake off altogether as he grows older. Families have their peculiarities that continue from one generation to another. The family endowment is often the foundation of individual success. Without physical sturdiness the man and woman on the farm are seriously handicapped and are liable to succumb in the struggle for existence; without mental ability and moral stamina members of the family fail to make a broad mark on the community, and the family influence declines. Mere acquisition ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... always been like that. Before the death of her mother she had always admired him, aware of the sturdiness of his character, of his rugged manliness, and of his ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... interview. She drew forward slightly in her chair. Her eyes seemed much larger and nearer to him. They were sweeping him up and down as if she were seeing the slim figure of Lanstron in contrast to Westerling's sturdiness; as if she were measuring the might of the five millions behind him and the three millions behind Lanstron. She let go a half-whispered "Yes!" which seemed to reflect the conclusion gained from the power of ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... his sturdiness of character by forcing a home in Hong Kong, for nature fashioned the north shore of this island to be an abiding-place for birds and animals. Adventurers from the British Isles have won a plateau from the sea by piling and filling in, and by executing engineering feats that have converted ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... his native fields and absorbing unconsciously that from which he later reaped his harvest. It is to writers of this kind of "English in shirt-sleeves" that we return again and again. In them we see shirt-sleeves opposed to evening dress; naturalness, sturdiness, sun-tan, and open sky, opposed to the artificial, to tameness, constriction, and characterless ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... steady blow in the face, and the fight between these unequally-matched combatants—a boy not fifteen against a much stronger boy of seventeen—began. The result could not be dubious. Walter fought with indomitable pluck; it was splendid to see the sturdiness with which he bore up under the blows of Harpour's strong fist, which he could only return at intervals. He was tremendously punished, while Harpour was barely touched, except by one well-directed blow which flashed the ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... greater command over himself. He was now provoked with Ormond for being so anxious about Moriarty Carroll, because he disliked the Carrolls, and especially Moriarty, for some slight cause not worth recording. He went to Ormond, and argued the matter with him, but in vain. Marcus resented this sturdiness, and they parted, displeased with each other. Though Marcus expressed in words much regret at his companion's adhering to the resolution of quitting his father's house, yet it might be doubted whether, at the end of the conference, these professions were entirely ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... their race, the same with that which their parents built before themselves were hatched. The Doctor could not do away the force of that single fact, with which his system was incompatible, yet he maintained that system with philosophic sturdiness, though experience brought confutation from a ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... contemptible fate of being born an Anglo-Saxon, and it came over him with a blessed shock that Emma had the missing St. Michael. Penetrated by the joy of the situation, he hesitated for a moment whether to give the initiative to the man or the woman. A glance at Crocker's uncompromising sturdiness convinced him that on that side the situation might be quickly exhausted. Emma he could trust to do it full justice. Excusing himself abruptly, he made for Frau Stern's lodgings, and with the taste of Crocker's vermouth still ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... to walking; she walked strongly, and with a trudging sturdiness, not without its grace. She came to the part of Fifth Avenue where the great houses begin to thin out, and vacant lots, as if ashamed of their vacancy, shrink behind boardings vivid with the news of picture-plays. It was the year when they were advertising the screen-masterpiece, Passion ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... Humphrey and Drogo, also wore a coronet. Large of limb and stout of heart, persevering under difficulties, crafty yet gifted with the semblance of sincerity, combining the piety of pilgrims with the morals of highwaymen, the sturdiness of barbarians with the plasticity of culture, eloquent in the council-chamber and the field, dear to their soldiers for their bravery and to women for their beauty, equally eminent as generals and as rulers, restrained by no scruples but such as policy suggested, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... content to do the work that was most like that of a beast of burden: in this mercantile city many porters must be wanted, and he could at least carry weights. Thanks to the justice that struggled in this confused world in behalf of vengeance, his limbs had got back some of their old sturdiness. He was stripped of all else that men would give ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... 6), of seven or nine feet in the side, is remarkable for its sturdiness: it will stand any weather, will hold two people and a fair quantity of luggage besides; it weighs from 25 to 40 lbs. It is not a good tent for hot weather, for it is far too stuffy, though by taking an additional joint ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... with an inflexible honesty that delighted all, but with a sturdiness of purpose that amazed both friends and foes. He surrounded himself at once by his political friends, thus establishing the now popular principle of "rotation ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... tug begins. Each boat has her own special course to travel up, and her own special berth of safety, and she knows every jag that will gore her on the road, and every flint from which she will strike fire. By dint of sheer sturdiness of arms, legs, and lungs, keeping true time with the pant and the shout, steadily goes it with hoist and haul, and cheerily undulates the melody of call that rallies them all with a strong will together, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... haps and mishaps, the trials and triumphs, of a delightful New England family, of whose devotion and sturdiness it will do ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Jackson's patriotism and honesty of purpose. His nature lacked, however, the sweet sympathetic qualities that characterised Lincoln; and while to a large body of his fellow-citizens he commended himself for sturdiness, courage, and devotion to the interests of the state, he was never able for himself to overcome the feeling that a man who failed to agree with a Jackson policy must be either a knave or a fool. He could not place himself in the position from which the other fellow was thinking or acting. ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... the oak in the sturdiness of my stature, I imagined that my mortality would remain pliant as long as I pleased. But I have taken so little care of myself this winter, and kept such bad hours, that I have brought a slow fever upon my nights, and am worn to a skeleton: Bethel has plump cheeks ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... quickly, and Abel agreed with equal sturdiness. Mrs. Trefusis' little cunning eyes twinkled. She heard Sarah's step in ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... characteristic emotional effects, as have all materials, even apart from the emotions or ideas they express. The glitter of gold and the sparkle of diamonds, the strength of marble, the sturdiness of oak—we hardly can think of these materials without thinking of the associations which go with them. Similarly the symmetry of the colonnades of a temple, the multiplicity and variety of Gothic ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... doffed his bonnet and stood uncovered, head becomingly bowed. Beethoven folded his arms and made no obeisance. This anecdote, not an apochryphal one, is always hailed as an evidence of Beethoven's sturdiness of character, his rank republicanism, while Goethe is slightly sniffed at for his snobbishness. Yet he was only behaving as a gentleman should. If Mozart had been in Beethoven's place, how courtly would have been the bow of the little, graceful Austrian composer! No, Beethoven was a boor, a ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... most of the Antilles the white race degenerates and dwarfs under the influence of climate and environment; but the Barbadian creole—tall, muscular, large of bone—preserves and perpetuates in the tropics the strength and sturdiness ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... them will send for his wife or fiancee to come out to him, another for his parents, brothers and sisters. Members of a new civilization marry young. This will promote general morality and ensure sturdiness in the new generation; and thus we shall have no delicate offspring of late marriages, children of fathers who spent their strength ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... the plant. If a strong, healthy, well-matured cane over-tops the lower wire of the trellis, it should be cut back so that the cane may be tied to the wire; otherwise the vine should again be cut almost to the ground, leaving but three or four buds. If the cane be left, in addition to sturdiness and maturity, it should be straight, for it is to become the trunk of the mature vine. The training of the young vine is now at an end, for the next season the vine must be started toward its permanent form, instructions for which are given in ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... fully realise either the economic sturdiness or the political courage of their Italian ally. Italy is not merely fighting a first-class war in first-class fashion but she is doing a big, dangerous, generous and far-sighted thing in fighting at all. France and England were obliged to fight; the necessity was as plain as daylight. ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... any character drawing, although on the easterly shore of Long Island there are many people who have retained, together with the plain old English names which they brought with them by way of Connecticut and Rhode Island, a simplicity and sturdiness of character not to be found elsewhere, I believe, so near the great cosmopolis, and which is worthy a place in ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... such drunken tumult in the kitchen the previous night. He was just about to mount his horse; but there was now nothing of the roysterer about his look or manner. He had restored neatness to his attire, and his expression was sedate and humble, though strength and sturdiness were as apparent in ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the past of Carmen Eschelle and Mrs. Henderson? Those who adhered to the strictest application of heredity, in considering the natural development of Evelyn Mavick, sought refuge in the physiological problem of the influence of Rodney Henderson, and declared that something of his New England sturdiness and fundamental veracity had been imparted to the inheritor ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the man, when he came out of retirement in 1911, was in many ways a wonderful Chinese: he was a fount of energy and of a physical sturdiness rare in a country whose governing classes have hitherto been recruited from attenuated men, pale from study and the lotus life. He had a certain task to which to put his hand, a huge task, indeed, since the reformation of four hundred ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... that time exacted in the Channel from all nations. "The king my brother and those of whom he takes counsel do not quite know me yet," wrote the king to his ambassador in London, "when they adopt towards me a tone of haughtiness and a certain sturdiness which has a savor of menace. I know of no power under heaven that can make me move a step by that sort of way; evil may come to me, of course, but no sensation of fear. The King of England and his chancellor may, of course, see pretty well what my strength is, but they do not see ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... fine, clean, fresh copy,—one of those brave old Teutonic classics of the last century, less exquisitely printed than the Elzevirs, less learnedly critical than the later Germans, but perfectly trustworthy and satisfactory, and attracting every one's eye on a library shelf, by the rich sturdiness of their creamy binding, that smacks of the true Dutch and German burgher wealth. The model of them all is Oudendorp's Caesar. But there is nothing very great about Pliny's Panegyric, and a man must be a very queer bibliomaniac ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... these old sailors had to overcome, or the dangers their tiny craft encountered. Their little boats would now be considered absolutely impracticable for long and arduous trips; and that they should have explored all they did, shows how sturdiness and courage have caused the growth of the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 11, March 17, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... not know that the picture was painted before Beethoven was born, you would say at once, "Beethoven!" There is a look of stern endurance, as if the artist had admired Rembrandt's "Burgomaster" a little too well, yet that sturdiness belonged to the Master, too; and there are the abstracted far-away look, the touch of proud melancholy, and the becoming unkemptness that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... came of the old stock which considered it a virtue to suffer and be silent, rather than call out and be saved. So she lay for five long hours suffering intense pain, but declaring to herself, with all the sturdiness of an old Roman warrior or an Indian chief, that she would not ask for any assistance "till it wuz time for ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... only a little away from her staring about him, looking for her. She felt that she had not seen him for years; she drank in his sturdiness, his boyish face, his air of caring nothing for authority. She had not seen his dark blue overcoat before. He stood directly under a lamp, swaying ever so little on his heels, his favourite, most characteristic, movement. He stood there as though he ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... by weather in a climate singularly clear and pure, under a sky untarnished by the dismal clouds from bituminous coal fires, which enshroud less favored lands, the brave little Dutch bricks held their own with a sturdiness becoming their ancestry. Those monuments of a simpler age have almost disappeared, and the ingenuity they exhibited, and the taste of which they were the specimens, are likely soon to be remembered only as ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... very jaws of disgust. The angry may have no pity,—but they are not less unkind in commission than the disgusted are unkind in omission. Thus a too refined breeding leads people away from effective pity and that sturdiness of conduct which is real philanthropy. Indeed, too much of refinement increases the number of disgusting things in the world; he who must have this or that luxury is not so much pleased with it as disgusted without it. Raising standards in things ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... is rather characteristically English. It sometimes conceals a robust good sense and even kindliness; but it is a base thing at best, and seems to be the shadow of commercial prosperity. Yet it at least implies a certain sturdiness of character, and a stubborn belief in one's own merits which is quite impervious to the lessons of experience. On sensitive and imaginative people the result of the professional struggle with life, the essence of which is often social ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... you must help us when you're ready. . . . I'm afraid you'll think I'm conservative. I am! So much to conserve. All this treasure of American ideals. Sturdiness and democracy and opportunity. Maybe not at Palm Beach. But, thank heaven, we're free from such social distinctions in Gopher Prairie. I have only one good quality—overwhelming belief in the brains and hearts of our nation, our state, our town. It's ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... nothing beyond acting as assistant to the tinker at the wheel, I surmised that the visit was solely for our benefit. As the tinker was devoted to his poor wife, so was Anselo and his dame devoted to their child. He was, indeed, a brave little fellow, and frequently manifested the precocious pluck and sturdiness so greatly admired by the Romanys of the road; and when he would take a whip and lead the horse, or in other ways show his courage, the delight of his parents was in its turn delightful. They would look at the child as if charmed, ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... Africa could not be perfected even with the combined forces of the two kingdoms at their fullest strength; however much they might harass, they had proved themselves utterly unable to attain such a success as even the most complacent patriotism could name a victory; while the sturdiness of the resistance of Rome seemed to banish the hypothesis that Jugurtha would be included in any terms that might be made. Yet the campaign had left Bocchus in an excellent position for negotiation. He had shown that Mauretania was a great make-weight in the scale against Rome; he had advertised ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... people, possessing, like the Jews, whom they resemble in their exclusiveness and widespread dispersion, a remarkable tenacity of race and faculty of adaptation to circumstances. They are frugal, sober, industrious and intelligent and their sturdiness of character has enabled them to preserve their nationality and religion under the sorest trials. They are strongly attached to old manners and customs but have also a real desire for progress which is full of promise. On the other hand they are greedy of gain, ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... and pleasure two complete suppers—to the openly expressed admiration of Emma, the waitress. Very shortly afterward he retired to his room, where, not trusting to the sturdiness of the bed-slats provided, he dragged mattress and bedding to the floor and was soon emitting snores that Landlord Coombs assured his wife was the beat of anybody ever slept in the house not countin' that travelin' man from Boston. Next ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... opacity as a part of the primitive idea of defence. Such an old house provokes on the part of an American a luxury of respect. So propped and patched, so tinkered with clumsy tenderness, clustered so richly about its central English sturdiness, its oaken vertebrations, so humanised with ages of use and touches of beneficent affection, it seemed to offer to our grateful eyes a small rude symbol of the great English social order. Passing out upon the highroad, we came to the common browsing-patch, the "village-green" of the tales ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... had not all of that sun. He did not see that distraction. He did not have all of that which was not all there is of that sturdiness. ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... man's doings, and knew all things that he saw. His wife was called Frigg, and their offspring is the Asa-stock, who dwell in Asgard and the realms about it, and all that stock are known to be gods. The daughter and wife of Odin was Earth, and of her he got Thor, him followed strength and sturdiness, thereby quells he all things quick; the strongest of all gods and men, he has also three things of great price, the hammer Miolnir, the best of strength belts, and when he girds that about him waxes his god strength one-half, and his iron gloves that he may not miss for ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... but Oh! how much has it to answer for in the survival of the unfittest. Alas! that the wheat and tares must grow together till the harvest. It is the syrup of phosphorus by which weakly mediocrity develops into sturdiness, a sturdy coarseness that else might have died down and been spared us. But, thanks to that or some other artificial fertiliser, it grows up with the idea that the duty which lies nearest to it is to write weary books, paint monotonous ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... an analogy I can draw, being no gardener—is the gradual process of adaptation to environment, so that the plant takes on a hardier quality, at an unavoidable sacrifice in size of bloom but with a corresponding gain in sturdiness and ability to bear the chilling winds and the beating sunlight of outdoors. Great size in a flower never appealed to me anyhow. I like a blossom that stands straight and firm upon its stem, that gives forth a clean, spicy fragrance and doesn't wilt when ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond |
