"Sullen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hopelessness. On the third day he smiled; it was in recess that she detected him at it. An organ-grinder's monkey in the school-yard called it forth, a sweet, glad smile, which lit up his dense features as the sun at twilight will pierce through and illuminate for a few minutes a sullen cloud-bank. Miss Willis saw in a vision on the spot a refuge from hopelessness. Behind that smile there must be a winsome soul. That spiritless expression was but a veil or rind hiding the germs of sensibility and reason. ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... a compromise was found. A chair was placed at the back of a packed box. American boxes are constructed for publicity, not privacy, but the other dozen occupants bulked between him and the house. He could see, but he could not be seen. Sullen and mortified he listened ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... so as not to see his brother treated cruelly; and now the men feasted together in sullen silence, for they were by no ...
— Children of the Old Testament • Anonymous
... set early in to-night, The sullen wind was soon awake, It tore the elm-tops down for spite, And did its worst to vex the lake, I listened with heart fit to ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... casting many big looks at me from time to time. I guessed the subject of his discourse, and as soon as I had handed my partner to her seat, strutted up to the place where he stood, and, cocking my hat in his face, demanded aloud, if he had anything to say to me. He answered with a sullen tone, "Nothing, at present, sir;" and turned about upon his heel. "Well," said I, "you where I am to be found at any time." His companions stared at one another, and I returned to the lady, whose features brightened at my approach, and immediately ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... suddenly she said a very strange thing. "Lee, I been thinkin'—back there on Earth I was doin' a lot of things that maybe were pretty rotten—anglin' for his money for instance—an' not carin' much what I had to do to get it." She gestured at the sullen Franklin who was sitting on the couch. "You know—things like that. An' I been thinkin'—you suppose, when we get where we're goin' now, that'll ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings
... the kitchen, Judith looked up with a hard face. A flame of sullen anger glowed in her dark eyes, and she went into the sitting-room and shut the door, as if by that act she were shutting her sister for evermore out of her heart and life. Salome, strung up to the last pitch of nervous tension, felt intuitively the significance of that closed door. For a moment ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... that he had "sat upon the throne, seen the Queen, and heard the Princess Royal squall." Every detail of the strange affair was eagerly canvassed. The Times reported that the boy Jones had "from his infancy been fond of reading," but that "his countenance is exceedingly sullen." It added: "The sofa under which the boy Jones was discovered, we understand, is one of the most costly and magnificent material and workmanship, and ordered expressly for the accommodation of the royal and illustrious visitors who call to pay their ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... two miles away at Saratoga, first heard the news of these latter events from a captain of militia, who, accompanied by six sullen-looking companions, rode up early on the morning of the raid and sharply ordered the three to mount the led horses he ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... of the meadow and walked along the highroad towards the village. A slight wind arose, and the sky looked gray and sullen. The gloomy moment had come that usually precedes the dawn, the full ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... dawdled at school, where his record was not good. Perhaps it was partly because he had no spending money, no clothing to maintain his boyish self-respect, no prospects of any sort, that he had become sullen, uncommunicative, and ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... sullen defiance, and the cane immediately descended on his open palm. Six similar cuts followed, during which the form looked on, not without terror; and Barker, squeezing his hands tight together, ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... so many others who could not write half so well had places, he might get one if he only kept trying. Bartley laughed at these business-turns of Marcia's as he called them; but sometimes they enraged him, and he had days of sullen resentment when he resisted all her advances towards reconciliation. But he kept hard at work, and he always owned at last how disinterested her most ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... skilful in adapting myself to people. I generally won their favor, but not their approbation. Whatever occupied me was completely present to me, but I did not ask whether it might be also suitable to others. I was mostly too lively or too quiet, and appeared either importunate or sullen, just as persons attracted or repelled me; and thus I was considered to be indeed full of promise, but at the ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... furnished, and lighted by a single window with small diamond-shaped panes, had but two occupants; a man and a woman. They took no notice of my intrusion, a circumstance which, in the manner of dreams, appeared entirely natural. They were not conversing; they sat apart, unoccupied and sullen. ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... out into the parkland beyond. The air was full of dead leaves, and the grass rustled with them as though it were alive, for this was the first wind since the frost. The great boughs of the oaks rattled and groaned above her, and high overhead, among the sullen clouds, a flight of rooks were being blown ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... he had been a man of his hands, a man who stood straight and faced the sun. Now the people of the desert town eyed him askance. He heard them say he was mad—that the desert had "got him." They were wrong. The desert and its secret was his—a sullen paramour, but his nevertheless. Had she not given him of ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... standing unwiped, while a piece of green weed, which he did not seem to have presence of mind enough to remove, trailed over his dripping locks. There was something in the sight which tickled Tom's sense of humor. He had been prepared for sullen black looks and fierce words, instead of which he was irresistibly reminded of schoolboys caught by their master using a crib, or in other ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... Nelson was placed in charge of it if he was within call; and the result was that he always won the absolute love and devotion of his men. He had a dignity which forbade him making himself cheap, but yet he got close to living hearts. "The enemy are there," he once said to a sullen crew, "and I depend upon you to follow me over the side when we annihilate the distance that separates our ships. You shall accept no danger that I do not accept—no hardship shall be yours that shall not be ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... silver shape of the baffled local patrol-ship faded behind us as we flew northward over heavy, fantastic crags; far above the tiny twinkling lights of the village of Nareda—out over the sullen dark ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... the abyss of eternity in hopeless dread. We shall not enter into the details of the revolting scene, but simply add that curses, blasphemy, tremulous cries for mercy, agonized entreaties to be advised, and sullen defiance, were all strangely and fearfully blended. In the midst of one of these revolting paroxysms Spike breathed his last. A few hours later his body was interred in the sands of the shore. It may be well to say in this place, that the hurricane of 1846, which is known to have occurred ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... convert resistance to the royal authority into a criminal act, we may call the effect of our victory peace, or obedience, or what we will, but the war is not ended; the hostile mind continues in full vigor, and it continues under a worse form. If your peace be nothing more than a sullen pause from arms, if their quiet be nothing but the meditation of revenge, where smitten pride smarting from its wounds festers into new rancor, neither the act of Henry the Eighth nor its handmaid of this reign will answer ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... with dismay how much his misdemeanour would tell against his pardon for the more important act of disobedience, and he took refuge in a sullen endeavour at indifference, while his uncle, thoroughly roused, spoke of the sins of disobedience and the dangers of betting. Perhaps the only part of the lecture that he really heard was, 'Remember, it was these habits in those who ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his existence was a succession of brute obedience to brute awareness, for it was only thus that one survived. There was the danger-sense on those days when the great-toothed cats roamed the valley, and the males-who-will-bring remained huddled and sullen in the caves above the great ledge; there was the hunger-sense when provender was low, and Gor-wah drove them out with grunts and gibes to hunt the wild-dogs and lizards and lesser beasts; and not infrequently there was the other ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... where the weak-eyed bat With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing, Or where the beetle winds His small but sullen horn, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... not quite just to call the Hebronites fanatical and sullen; they really only desire to hold Hebron as their own. "Hebron for the Hebronites" is their cry. The road, at all events, is quite safe. One of the surprises of Palestine is the huge traffic along the main roads. Orientals not only make a great bustle about what ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... malingerer arrived with yawns still unfinished, Prissy seized upon a temporary hush and began to laugh. Pet Bettany, who was always sullen before luncheon, grumbled: ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... the Cherubim and Seraphim, who were not stalwart and beautiful angels, but many-headed beasts from Babylonia, Owen remembered that these revolting monsters had been made beautiful in the AEgean: sullen Astaarte, desiring sacrifice and immolation, had risen from the waters, a ravishing goddess with winged Loves marvelling about her, Loves with conches to their lips, blowing the glad news to ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... was almost neglected, and puzzled tenants sought the janitor in vain. He was rarely home, but Dinah, dark-browed, sullen, red-lidded, and with a look of suffering on her plain face, responded to their demands and did, so far as she could, her husband's work and her own. She made no explanation of his absence, and the last ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... a surprise and the big Merrimac dashed at her with a sullen furious growl of her big guns. The game little bulldog swung out from the Minnesota and made straight for ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... to Montreuil, where we dine on choice pigeons. A very moderate charge. No chamber-pot in the room, owing to the negligence of the maid. This is an ordinary post. Set out again for Nampont. Troubled with flatulences and indigestion. Mr. P. is sullen, and seems to mistake an eructation for the breaking of wind backwards. From Nampont depart for Bernay, at which place we arrive in the evening, and propose to stay all night. N.B. The two last a redouble posts, and our cattle very willing, though not strong. ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... Nelton could have guessed it when the two met in the morning for a late Sunday breakfast. Leighton felt a touch of pride in the bearing of his son. He wondered if Lewis had taken to heart a saying of his: "To feel sullen is human nature; to show it is ill breeding." He decided that he hadn't, on the grounds that no single saying is ever more than a straw tossed on the current ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... or you will be torn to pieces!" Then followed some rapid interjections and vehement words in the same unintelligible dialect which had so puzzled her once before, when her grandfather could not control the horse he was attempting to shoe. The dog was sullen and unmanageable, keeping his black muzzle close to her face, and she grew pale with terror as she noticed that his shaggy breast and snarling jaws were dripping ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... before it assumed the level which it then preserved to the foot of the opposite mountains, nearly fifty miles off. No one appeared on the road; and the horsemen had, therefore, leisure to cast glances behind them, as they were slowly carried up the ascent. The alarm-bell was now sending its sullen sounds of dismay far and wide in the air, whose stillness was becoming more and more disturbed by the draughts of the spreading fires, as the canes caught, like torches, up the slopes to the right. Pale twinkling lights, sprinkled over the cape and the harbour-lights which looked like ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... two later she could watch them, although never without profound emotion. Two hundred girls, ranging in years from ten to twenty, with roughly clipped hair, and the hideous gray-green checked aprons of the institution. Two hundred faces, sullen or vacuous, pretty, silly faces, hard faces, faces tragically hopeless and pale. These young things were offenders against the law, shut away here behind iron bars for the good of the commonwealth. Julia, whose life had made her wise beyond her years, watched ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... too?" inquired the Boy, turning to the silent one who had thrown the axe at him. The fellow glared at him defiantly for a moment, then glanced at his wounded arm, which hung limp at his side. At last he answered with a sullen growl: ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... it. Marryat, moreover, never made me wish to run away to sea, whilst certainly Pater did make me wish for more 'colour' in the curriculum, for a renaissance of the Farrar period, when there was always 'a sullen spirit of revolt against the authorities'; when lockers were always being broken into and marks falsified, and small boys prevented from saying their prayers, insomuch that they vowed they would no longer buy brandy for their seniors. In some schools, I am told, the pretty old custom ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... Mostyn suppressed a sullen groan. "That is what they are doing while I am lying around here like this," he reflected. "Mitchell thinks I am a financial wonder, does he? Well, he doesn't know me; Irene doesn't know me. Dolly doesn't dream—my ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... save for the swish of the paddles, was brooding and full of menace. Paul, so sensitive to circumstance, felt as if it were a sullen sky, out of which would suddenly come a blazing flash of lightning. But to Henry the greatest anxiety was the narrowing of the river which must come before long. The Ohio was not a mile wide everywhere, and when that ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... her. Florent, however, had a yet more bitter enemy than Madame Mehudin in the house. As soon as ever he arrived there, Claire would get up without a word, take a candle, and go off to her own room on the other side of the landing; and she could be heard locking her door in a burst of sullen anger. One evening when her sister asked the tutor to dinner, she prepared her own food on the landing, and ate it in her bedroom; and now and again she secluded herself so closely that nothing was seen ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... seething with jubilant excitement and the main street was getting more and more alive with people every minute, the darkness of night began to give way before the dawn of day. And it was a beautiful dawn, too. The eastern sky did not reveal itself in sullen shade, but in clear color, more calm than brilliant, more in keeping with a message of peace than of ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... Sylvester Arms his shrill, ill tongue had been rarely still, now he maintained a sullen silence; Jem Burton, at least, had no cause of complaint. Crouched away in a corner, with Red Wull beside him, the little man would sit watching and listening as the Dalesmen talked of Owd Bob's doings, his staunchness, ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... which was buried under the hides in the front hatch, but was paddling with all his might. Without hesitation Rob fired two shots into the water ahead of his boat, and held up his hand in command to him to stop. These things were language that even an Aleut could understand. Scowling and sullen, he slowly paddled up to the bank. He understood the fierce menace of the three rifles now pointing at him. This time he obeyed the gestures made to him, and, turning about, proceeded to paddle slowly up the creek, followed by the boys ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... of relief was disastrous in its result. In a deep, careless stroke, his paddle struck a submerged log and the slender blade snapped short off with a loud crack, the ticklish canoe careened suddenly to one side, then righted again with a sullen splash. At the sound the silent point quickly stirred with life. There was the hum of excited voices and a blinding flash of flame lit up the darkness, followed by the sharp crack of rifles and the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... rebuilt with sound timbers and strong machinery, was going round as merrily as ever, and grinding as much if not more grist than it did in former days. People had wondered at the change in Sam Green; they wondered still more at the change in his master,—once so sullen and ill-tempered,—now so gentle and kind and obliging. The change in him was even greater than in the ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... to the rescue. He had no weapon and could not get into the cage, but he spat with such copious vigor in the Fox's face that he dropped the Kitten and returned to the corner, there to sit blinking his eyes in sullen fear. ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... and a great day it was. Outside the Ninth Ward we had passed beyond our hopes. That ward, though,—at least from the first reports, and we paid slight attention to the later ones,—remained, through Gunderson, sullen, incomprehensible, uncommitted. And at night, the voting over, newspapers began to show the bulletins as the ballots were counted and the returns came in. We were at campaign headquarters and got the ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... slave may sulk, and may not; whilst also ill and dying, they may be flogged on the point of death, as Haj Ibrahim flagellated his dying victim. No doubt, at times these wretched slaves, when worn down and exhausted, play some innocent tricks to get a ride. Nevertheless, such is the power of sullen insensibility which slaves can command, that the brutal masters may flog them to death without finding out whether they are ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... posts by military force, the missionaries were brought back under armed protection, the practice of the ancient religion was suppressed by the strong hand, and efforts, too often unsuccessful, were made to win back the apostate tribes to something more than a sullen submission to the government and the religion of their conquerors. The later history of Spanish Christianity in New Mexico is a history of decline and decay, enlivened by the usual contentions between the ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... suffering also. I see men h ere going about in the streets who look ground down by some pinching sorrow or care—who are not only sufferers but haters. Now, in the South we have our poor, but there is not that terrible expression in their countenances of a sullen sense of injustice which I see here. You do not know the South, Mr. Thornton,' she concluded, collapsing into a determined silence, and angry with herself for ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... gate and in the jaws of hell, Revengeful cares and sullen sorrows dwell; And pale diseases, and repining age; Want, fear, and famine's unresisted ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... persistent ardour of Elena's affection, awoke now with redoubled vigour, and the suspicion that a man was at the bottom of this enigmatical affair increased his sufferings a hundredfold. Sometimes he would be seized with sullen anger against the absent woman, a bitter rancour, almost a desire for revenge, as if she had mystified and duped him in order to give herself to another. Then again he would feel that he did not long for her, did not ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... was left but the last chance before despair, and apprehensive of the failure of this hope also, his gloved hand, resting upon a pocket hidden at his hip, sought support from the hilt of a pistol secreted there. Was this the meaning of the sullen and ghastly determination glaring from his eyes? Yes, love and death were almost mated; and so in every busy Congress do the spectres of temptation and ill-omen lurk ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... while Henshaw made no reply. He sat thinking strenuously, evidently weighing his chances, estimating the strength of his adversary's position. Now and again he shot a glance, half probing, half sullen, at Gifford, who leaned back against the mantelpiece coolly awaiting his answer. ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... feeling that they had been lured to the house under false pretences, grew among Lady Dauntrey's visitors and was expressed stealthily, a word here, a word there, and sullen looks behind the backs of host and hostess. Even on the first day disappointment began to wriggle from guest to guest, like a little cold, sharp-nosed snake, leaving its clammy trail ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... well that Joseph's father would pay them for the time they lost in pleasing his son. And now they were young men like himself, only they knew no Greek; rough young men, of simple minds and simple life, who were drawn to Jesus—James a lean man, whose small sullen eyes, dilatory speech and vacant little laugh used to annoy Joseph. James always asked him to repeat the words though he had heard perfectly. Joseph liked John better, for his mind was sturdy and his voice grew sullen at any word of reproof and his eyes flamed, and Joseph ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... glass as he gazed out of the window. There was a cold, sullen gleam in his eyes when he finally looked ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... spider's poisonous sting, Healed by the pleasing antidote of sounds. When Sirius reigns, and the sun's parching beams Bake the dry gaping surface, visit thou Each even and morn, with quick observant eye, Thy panting pack. If in dark sullen mood, The gloating hound refuse his wonted meal, 200 Retiring to some close, obscure retreat, Gloomy, disconsolate: with speed remove The poor infectious wretch, and in strong chains Bind him suspected. Thus ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... misleart tinkler, and shook her head. I happened to come into the room at this time, and seeing all the charitable ladies weeping around, and the randy mother talking to the poor lassie as loudly and vehement as if she had been both deaf and sullen, I commanded the officers, with a voice of authority, to remove the mother, by which we had for a season peace, till ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... and wretched failure for the great mass of mankind. The many are plundered to enrich the few. Vast combinations depress the price of labor and increase the cost of the necessaries of existence. The rich, as a rule, despise the poor; and the poor are coming to hate the rich. The face of labor grows sullen; the old tender Christian love is gone; standing armies are formed on one side, and great communistic organizations on the other; society divides itself into two hostile camps; no white flags pass from the one to the other. They wait only for the drum-beat ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... are unlocked. One day I thought I saw signs of a falling out between the conspirators, and I set myself to watch for some disclosure which might escape from one side or the other in the frankness of anger. The earth was sullen and overcast, the sky dark and forbidding, the clouds rolled together and grew black, and the shadows deepened upon the grass. At last there was a vivid flash of lightning, a crash of thunder, and the sudden roar of rain. "Now," I said ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... is, that, in spite of his efforts to assume the air of a grave statesman, he was as impatient, and as vain of his love, as a young collegian hurrying to his first rendezvous with his beloved. During dinner he had been sullen and silent; now he became talkative, and chatted away, without troubling himself about ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... cowered the hag-like night. A wolf-howl would have been a welcome sound, And there was none in all that stricken land; Yet with such silence, darkness, death around, Learned we to love as few can understand. Spirit with spirit fused, and soul with soul, There in the sullen shadow of the Pole. ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... Browne's upbraidings, just when he felt that he had done a kind action, and yielded, against his judgment, to Maggie's entreaties, had made him think himself very ill used. And now here was Edward speaking in a sullen, savage kind of way, instead of showing any gratitude. The idea of Mr. Henry's stern ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... unprepossessing outline, I could not really call it a bad face, or even a sulky one. And yet both managers and hands had given me a bad account of Tim Hibblethwaite. "Surly Tim," they called him, and each had something to say about his sullen disposition to silence, and his short answers. Not that he was accused of anything like misdemeanor, but he was "glum loike," the factory people said, and "a surly fellow well deserving his name," as the master of his ...
— "Surly Tim" - A Lancashire Story • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... had to tell him the old Armoric tale which Tennyson has since rendered so lovelily, for, amongst artists at least, he was one of the earlier borrowers in the British legends. And as he told it, in a half sullen kind of way, the heart of the young marquis glowed within him, and he vowed to himself that Lenorme and no other should marry his sister. But, lest he should reveal more emotion than the obvious occasion justified, he restrained speech, and again silence fell, during which ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... of the blacks in general, as well as what seemed the sullen inefficiency of the whites it was not without humane satisfaction that Captain Delano witnessed the steady good ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... Wut-a-qut-o's brow, when at last slowly and lingeringly, and with feet that, as it were, spurned each step they made, Elizabeth took her way to the house. But no sooner did her feet touch the doorstep than her listless and sullen mood gave place to a fit of lively curiosity — to see what Winthrop had done. She turned to the left into ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... officials stepped forward, with a key. Desmond saw that his face was pale, and that he had a sullen look. ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... a window, looking out into the night. There was no light in the room. The stars were hidden behind a thick curtain of sullen clouds. ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... believed this, too, and a sullen, smouldering anger took possession of them. Here was a good man ruined. Some of the people whom he had helped in his former days—some of the rude, coarse people of the low quarter who were still sufficiently unenlightened ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... keenly felt, that their condition was altered, and was still rapidly altering for the worse, they consequently grew less tractable and cheerful in their dispositions; they went to their daily labour with more reluctance, and became more sullen and discontented as their privations increased; but still they were not emaciated, and become languid and weak, as most of them now are, for the want of a sufficiency of the common necessaries of life. As a proof of this, I will mention a day's work done by ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... prospect on all sides. Black moor, bleak fell, straggling forest, intersected with sullen streams as black as ink, with here and there a small tarn, or moss-pool, with waters of the same hue—these constituted the chief features of the scene. The whole district was barren and thinly-populated. Of towns, only Clithero, Colne, and Burnley—the latter little more than ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of a rifle rang through the woods. Three frightful yells were heard, and two sullen roars. Five animals bounded into the air and five lifeless bodies lay upon the plain. The well-aimed bullet had done its work. Entering the open throat of the grizzly it had traversed his body only to enter the throat of the California lion, and in like ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... the voice in which they were spoken, were alike at variance with Mr. Bashwood's usual language and Mr. Bashwood's usual tone. There was a sullen depression in his face—there was a furtive distrust and dislike in his eyes when they looked at Midwinter, which Midwinter himself now noticed for the first time. Before he could answer the ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... adventurers under Strongbow, the people were in some districts hardly more than heathen. This Abbey, set by Henry Plantagenet in a remote valley, was like a fort on the frontier of Christendom. The people were sullen, suspicious, ignorant, and piteously poor. To deal with them demanded all that a man had of courage, faith and wisdom. And now ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... slight pause, and Jocelyn took his resolution. Yet there was still a sullen look in the eyes he lifted to his ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... might have been. He was gay, and caressing when he had a mind. In his youth he had been one of those men who are always deceived by their wives and never by their mistresses, because they are, at the same time, the most sullen of husbands and the most charming of lovers in existence. He was a connoisseur of painting. He had in his chamber a marvellous portrait of no one knows whom, painted by Jordaens, executed with great dashes of the brush, with millions of details, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Julia-Ann and Maria, As happily lived as good girls could desire; And though they were neither grave, sullen, nor mute, They seldom or never were ...
— Gems of Poetry, for Girls and Boys • Unknown
... louder and apparently nearer as the morning advanced, until in imagination one could mark the positions of individual batteries pounding away opposite Colenso and Skiet's drift. At last the roar died away in sullen growls, giving us the hope that ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... contrast to Jonah's action in refusing to carry out Jehovah's command. The Ninevites, clad in sackcloth, repenting for their sins, and craving Jehovah's forgiveness, are far more attractive than the sullen prophet, complaining because Jehovah has spared the heathen foes of his race and later upbraiding Jehovah because of the destruction of the gourd that for a time had protected his head from the burning sun. Jehovah's concluding remonstrance voices the message of the book. Like the ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... of a religious opposition to each other; it would be the worst of evils, and yet the times appear to threaten something of the sort. There is the gabble of 'the Church in danger,' the menacing and sullen disposition of the Dissenters, all armed with new power, and the restless and increasing turbulence of the Catholics, all hating one another, and the elements of discord stirred up first by ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... not reply, but Marie beheld his cheek grow livid, and the foam actually gather on his lip; but the calm and holy gaze she had fixed upon him, as he spoke, quailed not, nor changed. The invisible door of her cell closed with a deep, sullen sound, as if her tormentor had thus, in some measure, given vent to the unutterable fury shaking his soul to its centre; and Marie was alone. She stood for many, many minutes, in the fearful dread of his ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... e'en the spirits of the lost, that dwell Where the black stream of sullen Acheron flows, Rest on that holy night when Christ arose, And for a while ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... in hopes to pacify her anger, discovers Sagarika on the way and mistakes her for the queen. He rushes to her and tears off the tendril. He soon discovers his mistake, embraces her and observes, "When the bosom of my queen swells with sighs, I express concern; when she is sullen, I soothe her; when her brows are bent, and her face is distorted with anger, I fall prostrate at her feet. These marks of respect are due to her exalted position; but the regard that springs from vehement ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... and hate; but such a design as this boy's intervention seemed too subtle for the giant Creole's brain. Manuel accounted himself master of the negro when it came to treachery and cunning. Moreover, he knew Leborge to be a sullen and suspicious character, little likely to talk or to ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... quarter to six Jim appeared, still sullen from the events of the afternoon and wearing a dressing gown and a pair of slippers, Flannigan following him with a sponge, a bucket of water and an armful of bath towels. Everybody protested at having to move, but he was firm, and they all filed down the stairs. I was the last, with Aunt Selina ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... outside, whilst the frail wooden house vibrated perceptibly. It could not be caused by the wind: for, although the rain kept pouring steadily down, the furious sou'-west gusts had long ago been beaten into a sullen silence by the descending torrents. For a moment, and half-awake, an old tropical reminiscence floated through my sleepy, startled mind: "Can it be an earthquake?" I dreamily wondered. But, no earthquake of ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... how the neighbouring convent bell! Throws o'er the waves its vesper swell; Sullen it bomes from shore to shore, Blending its chime with the dash of the oar. Pull away, pull away! row, boys, row! A long pull, a strong pull, and off ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... base and unbecoming thing to use them ill, so they do not think it amiss for people to divert themselves with their folly: and, in their opinion, this is a great advantage to the fools themselves: for if men were so sullen and severe as not at all to please themselves with their ridiculous behaviour and foolish sayings, which is all that they can do to recommend themselves to others, it could not be expected that they would be so well provided for, nor so tenderly used as ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... Christ's silence was not sullen, or contemptuous. He had said enough. His silence was prudent—perhaps necessary. He had come into the world to suffer—"to make his soul an offering for sin." Had he said more, perhaps Pilate had not dared to give sentence against him. Had not Christ died the ends of his ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... high spirited, his feelings easily moved, his pride easily wounded. His brother was too dull and stolid to understand him, taking for deliberate malice what was but boyish mischief, and regarding him as sullen when he was ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... jealousy had sprung up between the two men he had never seen Jemima, nor tasted the fruits of Curlydown's garden. Mrs. Curlydown, who approved of Bagwax, had been angry, and Jemima herself had become sullen and unloving to her father. On that very morning Mrs. Curlydown had declared that she hated quarrels like poison. 'So do I, mamma,' said Jemima, breaking her silence emphatically. 'Not that Mr. Bagwax is ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... times, and her mother had to arrange a series of screens in her room so that when Frederick William came to see her the daughter could escape behind them. After such scenes Fritz and Wilhelmina would try to comfort each other, but the boy was gradually growing more sullen ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... see her mother any more, for when she did Mademoiselle would answer "Not to-day." It was somehow a rather difficult time for them all; the Major was morose and sullen and Mademoiselle often had "little rains" in her eyes. She was not very patient with the lively young person who had grown tall enough to reach even the topmost drawer of the ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... attempted to enforce his commission; but as an hundred swords at once glittered in the air, he contented himself with protesting against the violence which had been offered to him in the execution of his duty, and stood aloof, a sullen adn moody spectator of the ceremonial, muttering as one who should say: "You'll rue the day that clogs ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... Brises. But as the sun must always be parted from the morning-light, to return to it again just before setting, so Achilleus loses Briseis, and regains her only just before his final struggle. In similar wise Herakles is parted from Iole ("the violet one"), and Sigurd from Brynhild. In sullen wrath the hero retires from the conflict, and his Myrmidons are no longer seen on the battle-field, as the sun hides behind the dark cloud and his rays no longer appear about him. Yet toward the evening, as Briseis returns, he appears in his might, clothed ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... which, until recently, had been the habitat of cattlemen exclusively, he was a symbol of conquest. He remembered the petty warfare that had marked the coming of his kind, a warfare that he had survived and which had ended in a sort of sullen tolerance of his presence. A few years ago he had gone armed with rifle and pistol, and his herders had been weaponed against attack. Now he strode his acres unafraid and unthreatened, and his employees carried rifle or six-shooter only for protection against prowling coyotes or ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... O Earth, O Sky: Grey sea, she is mine alone—I Let the sullen boulders hear my cry, And rejoice tho' ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... and gloomy. Napoleon was not pleased by this behavior, and in commending him to the hospitality of Talleyrand, at the splendid castle of Valencay, declared that his whole character could be summed up in a single word—sullen. Poor Talleyrand! he saw himself condemned to the "honorable mission" of turnkey to a dispossessed monarch whose guard of honor was a troop of eighty mounted police. By the Emperor's grace the young culprit was ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... they find in those names of degenerated establishments only new motives to discontent. Those bodies, which, when full of life and beauty, lay in their arms and were their joy and comfort; when dead and putrid, become but the more loathsome from remembrance of former endearments. A sullen gloom, and furious disorder, prevail by fits: the nation loses its relish for peace and prosperity, as it did in that season of fulness which opened our troubles in the time of Charles the First. A species of men to whom ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... dash of the oars was heard, and the yawl was already twenty feet from the mysterious image. Then followed a desperate struggle to regain the cruiser, ere the gust should strike her. The sullen murmur of the wind, rushing through the rigging of the ship, was audible some time before they reached her side; and the struggles between the fabric and the elements, were at moments so evident, as to cause the young commander to fear he would be ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... an interminably long and terrible night—they thought the day would never come. At last the darkness gradually changed to a settled sullen grey gloom—which was day. They looked at each other, but found no comfort in meeting each other's eyes. There was no one countenance in which a beam of hope could be found lurking. They were all doomed—they remained crouched where they had sheltered themselves ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... at about a hundred and forty. At a glance Carroll knew that it was nearer a hundred and eighty. Normal breadth of shoulder was more than made up for by unusual depth of chest. Ready-made trousers bulged with the enormous muscular development of calf and thigh. The face, clean-shaven, was sullen with the fear inspired by the sudden entrance of Carroll and Leverage; and there was more than a hint of evil in it. As they watched, the sullenness of expression was supplanted by a leer, and then by a mask of professional placidity—the bovine expression which one expects to find in the average ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... ever did his best work without some great ideal before him which refreshed and quickened all his energies. If the business man would save himself from becoming sordid, and the poorest paid working man from becoming sullen and hardened, they should keep ever before them this ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... Woman's manner became more sullen than ever. She seized upon a ladle and began stirring the steaming pot. "It does very well," she declared. "Houses are funny or otherwise according to what goes on in them. When you've got your hands full of children who don't want to work you can't say that your house ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... place gets on my nerves!" said Durkin testily. Yes, he told himself, he was sick of it, sick of the monotony, of the idleness, of the sullen malevolence of it all. It was gay only to the eyes; and to him it would never seem ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... other respects, her influence (so far as I can learn) had been successfully exerted in restraining certain mischievous propensities in him, which occasionally showed themselves. The effect of her death has been to intensify that reserve to which I have already alluded. He is sullen and irritable—and the good landlady at the lodgings does not disguise that she shrinks from taking care of him, even for a few days. Until I hear from you, he will remain under the charge of ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... the senses. The streets were thronged with working people. The hum of labour resounded from every house; lights gleamed from the long casement windows in the attic storeys, and the whirl of wheels and noise of machinery shook the trembling walls. The fires, whose lurid, sullen light had been visible for miles, blazed fiercely up, in the great works and factories of the town. The din of hammers, the rushing of steam, and the dead heavy clanking of engines, was the harsh ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... habit of noting defections from the loyal side among men of substance and position in the colony, and particularly among members of the representative Chamber, where the cry for Responsible Government was waxing loud, and where sullen protests were almost daily heard against the system of official patronage and favouritism that prevailed in the government of the Province. The Administration being now in the minority in the popular Chamber, ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... My good-natured reaction was annoying to Satish; he retired into sullen silence. As our cab entered the Dakshineswar grounds, he ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... illusion, and that, whatever mist of evil might seem to have gathered over her, the real Beatrice was a heavenly angel. Incapable as he was of such high faith, still her presence had not utterly lost its magic. Giovanni's rage was quelled into an aspect of sullen insensibility. Beatrice, with a quick spiritual sense, immediately felt that there was a gulf of blackness between them which neither he nor she could pass. They walked on together, sad and silent, and came thus ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... shocked to encounter them... wearing Federal uniforms and bearing bright muskets and gleaming bayonets.... They are jostled from the sidewalks by dusky guards, marching four abreast. They were halted, in rude and sullen tones, ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... artistic talent, and imagination failings in a Challoner, she had given him food for thought, which was as far as she wished to go just then, and on the whole she thought she had reason to be satisfied. When she had moved away, Challoner showed Millicent a picture of grey hills and a sullen tarn, half revealed between folds of rolling vapour, and the girl ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... ironing-board, bending low over her work to hide her confusion, when he returned with Gertie. A glance at her sister-in-law told her that there was to be no unbending in that quarter until she had made proper atonement. There was little conciliatory about that sullen face. ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... rock Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit 340 There is not even silence in the mountains But dry sterile thunder without rain There is not even solitude in the mountains But red sullen faces sneer and snarl From doors of mudcracked houses If there were water And no rock If there were rock And also water And water 350 A spring A pool among the rock If there were the sound of water only Not the cicada And dry grass singing But ...
— The Waste Land • T. S. Eliot
... the swains of Italia 'Mong myrtles to rove, Give the proud, sullen Spaniard His bright orange grove; Give gold-sanded streams To the sons of Chili, But, oh! give the hills Of the heather ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... to run you through," said his friend gloomily. Indeed, the Doctor stood in instant fear of this catastrophe; for Captain Runacles' temper was a byword, and not even his customary dark flush looked so dangerous as the lustreless, sullen eyes now sunk in a face that was drawn and pinched and absolutely wax-like in colour. To the Doctor's astonishment, however, it was the little hunchback who now jumped up and whipped ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the engagement to be broken off, and Piozzi went to Italy. Her infatuation, however, was too strong to be overcome. Under the struggle, long protracted, her health gave way, and at length, by the advice of her doctor, and with the sullen consent of Miss Thrale, Piozzi was summoned to Bath. He, too, had been faithful, and he lost no time in obeying the summons. They were married, according to the Roman Catholic rites, in London, and again, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... changed from bowers of Paradise That desolate region, overgrown with thorn And thistle rank—a trackless waste forlorn, Unblessed by God, o'erarched by sullen skies, There stand that guilty pair, now sadly wise, Their hearts with grief, their feet with briers torn, Vainly their faded innocence they mourn, And toward the gates of Eden turn their eyes. No more to see the beauty and the bloom Of that blest garden ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... great "savoir-faire," made themselves tactfully gracious. Specially the Countess showed that amiable condescension of great ladies whom no contact can sully, and she was charming. On the other hand, fat Madame Loiseau, who had the soul of a gendarme, remained distant, sullen, ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant |
