"Truculency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... die, in communion with the Anglo-American church, I do not wish to exculpate my own particular branch of the Catholic body from blame; but, in these later times, when Christianity is returning to its truculency, forgetful of the chiefest of virtues, Charity, I have often recalled the scene of that solemn noon-tide, and asked myself the question, "if any man could have heard Lucy, as I did, on that occasion, concluding with the petition which Christ himself gave to his disciples ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... the long, glossy, dark-blue, double-breasted coat which he put on occasionally on Sundays and holidays—he always looked a well-fed, respectable, prosperous member of society; whilst his imperturbable composure, and the entire absence of obsequiousness or truculence in his manner, indicated plainly that he possessed no small amount of calm, deep-rooted self-respect. A stranger, on seeing him, might readily have leaped to the conclusion that he must be the Village Elder, but in reality he was a simple member of the Commune, like his neighbour, poor Zakhar Leshkof, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... discussed the situation—but it was impossible to know in what spirit, because they quarrelled in their own language. Belfast suspected one of them of irreverence, and in this incertitude thought that there was no option but to fight them both. They became very much terrified by his truculence, and henceforth lived amongst us, dejected, like a pair of mutes. Wamibo never spoke intelligibly, but he was as smileless as an animal—seemed to know much less about it all than the cat—and consequently was safe. Moreover, he had belonged to the chosen band of Jimmy's rescuers, ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... both popular and powerful. There is, moreover, a very marked difference in the character of the inhabitants of neighbouring places. In one the prevailing characteristic may be mildness and affability of manners, whereas in another it may be truculence and incivility. Neither the influence of politics nor of religion sufficiently accounts for these differences in character. They seem to rest rather upon obscure and remote causes, such as racial and congenital tendencies. All this is especially ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... their wine; and the Parson, satisfied with what he deemed a clencher upon his favorite subject of discussion, changed the subject to lighter topics, till happening to fall upon tithes, the Squire struck in, and by dint of loudness of voice, and truculence of brow, fairly overwhelmed both his guests, and proved to his own satisfaction that tithes were an unjust and unchristianlike usurpation on the part of the Church generally, and a most especial and iniquitous infliction upon the Hazeldean ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... took its course down Broadway, and when it reached Union square the spring sunlight was shining softly on the spot which has often served as the people's forum. At the north end a crowd had gathered and from a drygoods box a speaker was haranguing them. From the violence of the gestures and the truculence of the voice whose words did not reach him, Hamilton Burton knew that it was an agitator whose burden was the hardness of the times and the inequality of living conditions. His lips shaped themselves ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... so much about it," said Mrs. Levitt with a certain calm, subdued truculence, "you may as well know everything. You are quite mistaken in supposing that Mr. Waddington did not advise the investment. On the contrary, it was on his representations that I decided to invest. And it was on the strength of the security ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... entered the room immediately afterwards was of a very different type. His mode of entry was of another description. Whereas the man of blood swaggered in with an air of nervous truculence, as if he were afraid that some one was desirous of disputing his equality, the next comer crept in softly, and closed the door with accuracy. He was the incarnation of benevolence—in the best sense of the word, a sweet old man—looking out upon the world through large ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... line there. To these provincial autocrats, before whom the peaceable population of all classes had been accustomed to tremble, the reserve of that English-looking engineer caused an uneasiness which swung to and fro between cringing and truculence. Gradually all of them discovered that, no matter what party was in power, that man remained in most effective touch with the higher ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... "the truckling truculence of a mock-modest monster of meretricious mendacity cannot be allowed to prevail against a policy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various
... face had grown harder, the hollow freckled cheeks seemed to have sunk a little, and the pump-handle chin seemed to be defining itself, even to caricature. There was still a certain air of bravoure, of truculence, which attracted, and might still charm. He turned from the mirror, went up-stairs, and danced three or four times. He remained until the last, and followed by an increasing despair he muttered, as he ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... a combative spirit amongst the men of the assembly. Instantly a spirit of aggression, of truculence, swelled up underneath waistcoats and starched shirt bosoms. More than one offender was promptly asked to "step outside." It was like young bucks excited by an encounter of stags, lowering their horns upon the slightest provocation, showing off before the does and fawns. Old quarrels ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... me as regularly and irresistibly as the moon makes our tides. Here is richness. The breathless impetuosity of the whole narrative, the inconceivable truculence of the man, fascinates me, who am so different. When I looked at that "Perseus" in Florence, when I leaned over the medal-cases in South Kensington and stared hard at the work of his murderous hands, I felt awed and baffled. How could he do it—he ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... I wish for permission to send in my resignation." He was clearly deficient in that subservience and ready obedience to authority which was the best passport to promotion in the Civil Service; there was in his disposition already a certain truculence and impatience. From this time he nourished a bitter hatred of the ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... Truculence can never win the day. Restraint, tolerance, a sense of humor and of proportion and the force of logic are the marks of the man qualified for intellectual leading. Within the services, even though he has no great rank, there ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... of our schooling days under Mr. Trigg was given so far back in this history that the reader will have little recollection of it. Mr. Trigg was in a small way a sort of Jekyll and Hyde, all pleasantness in one of his states and all black looks and truculence in the other; so that out of doors and at table we children would say to ourselves in astonishment, "Is this our schoolmaster?" but when in school we would ask, "Is this Mr. Trigg?" But, as I have related, ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... these wonders take place in our presence?" asked Mrs. Quigg, who had returned to something like her original truculence of doubt. "Why should you ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... soft heart was touched by his pallor and weakness, but she could not deny that there was something queer here. Maggie almost wished that his old mood of truculence would return. She was terrified, too, of these night scenes, because they were so bad for his heart. The local doctor, a clever young fellow called Stephens, told her that he was recovering from the pneumonia, but that his ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... was perhaps the most important influence in forming his public ideals. Of everything that Cleveland represented—civil service reform; the cleansing of politics, state and national; the reduction in the tariff; a foreign policy which, without degenerating into truculence, manfully upheld the rights of American citizens; a determination to curb the growing pension evil; the doctrine that the Government was something to be served and not something to be plundered—Page became ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... mean it. Fifty thousand the year to do with as you like. No hospitals, churches, heathen; but the needy and deserving near by. You can send boys to college and girls to schools; and Kitty'll be glad to be your lieutenant. I never had a college education. Not that I ever needed it,"—with sudden truculence in his tone. "But it might be a good thing for some of the rising generations in my tenements. I'll leave the choice to you. And when it comes to voting, why, tell me which way to vote, and I'll do it. I'll be a bull ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... like a bull for force and wrath. His was that colossal physique that develops in the South; his shoulders were mighty under his mean coat, and his chained wrists were square and knotty. He held his head up with a sort of truculence in its poise; it was the head, massive, sensuous- lipped, slow-eyed, of a whimsical Nero. It was weariness, perhaps, that give him his look of satiety, of appetites full fed and dormant, of lusts grossly slaked. A murmur ran through the hall as he passed; it was as though the wretched men ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... of the Dail Committee, with truculence, "that we're a pack of worthless, finagling' and maybe even Protestant renegades from the ways an' the traditions of your fathers! There is been shenanigans goin' on! I'll ...
— Attention Saint Patrick • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... obviously being compromised by the lack of an acceptable Army response.[14-88] In a word, the argument over civil rights in the armed forces had become a political liability for Louis Johnson, and he wanted it out of the way. Glossing over the Army's truculence, Johnson blamed the committee and its recommendations for his problem, and when his frontal assault on the committee failed—Kenworthy reported that the secretary tried to have the committee disbanded—he had to devise another approach.[14-89] The ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... proper that we assure our friends once again that, in the discharge of this responsibility, we Americans know and we observe the difference between world leadership and imperialism; between firmness and truculence; between a thoughtfully calculated goal and spasmodic reaction to ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... abandoned all hope of assistance from Huntington, he was thinking of other measures, and was scarcely as attentive as he might have been to the increasing truculence of his host. ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... peculiar circumstances, either at home or abroad. At home we want science, research, labour, tone, manners, and time; abroad we get the accumulated prejudices that have arisen from a factitious state of things; or, what is perhaps worse, their reaction, the servility of castes, or the truculence of revolution. ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... sang the same battle-hymn against the enemies of God and with a little too much vehemence—not to say truculence—as is the way with earnest believers. His gentler correspondent could not tolerate the thought of duelling, and she disapproved of punishment by death. Browning argues that for one who values the good opinion of society—not for himself—that good opinion is a possession which may, like ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... will!" Maurice cried with astonishing truculence, contorting himself into what he may have considered a posture of defense. "Let's see you ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... cock-loft came a passionate voice of such rabid truculence as sounds in the throat of a dog straining ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... rouses his righteous indignation. The unmercifulness of Christian people is a worse sin than many a deed that goes by very ugly names amongst men. And so the judgment that falls upon this evil-doer, who, by his truculence to his fellow-servant, had betrayed the baseness of his nature and the ingratitude of his heart, is, 'Put him back where he was! Tie the two and a quarter millions round his neck again! Let us see what he will do by ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... because he was beginning to paint himself a little fancy picture of a home that was to be, with a little fairy Edie flitting through it, and brightening it all delightfully with her dainty airy presence. So he even went so far as to mitigate considerably the native truculence of his political economy paper, after Edie's advice—not, of course, by making any suggestion of opinions he did not hold, but by suppressing the too-prominent expression of those he actually believed in. Max ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... many hunters rank the buffalo first among the dangerous beasts. This is not my own opinion, but he is certainly dangerous enough. He possesses the size, power, and truculence of the rhinoceros, together with all that animal's keenness of scent and hearing but with a sharpness of vision the rhinoceros has not. While not as clever as either the lion or the elephant, he is tricky enough when angered to circle back for the purpose of attacking his pursuers in the rear or ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... was never a mystery to myself. I was ever hot-tempered, single-minded, and given to women. From these cardinal tendencies there proceeded truculence of temper, wrangling, obstinacy, rudeness of carriage, anger, and an inordinate desire, or rather a headstrong passion, for revenge in respect to any wrong done to me; so that this inclination, which is censured by many, became ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... people," said Wendell Phillips one blue day, "we Americans are afraid of one another." The saying seems harsh. It goes counter to the national delusion of uncompromising courage and limitless truculence. It wars upon the national vanity. But all the same there is truth in it. Here, more than anywhere else on earth, the status of an individual is determined by the general consent of the general body of his fellows; here, as we have seen, there are ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... us see what was the real foundation for this imposing fabric. Freeman's boisterous truculence made such a deafening noise, and raised such a blinding dust, that it takes some little time and trouble to discover the hollowness of the charges. With four-fifths of Froude's narrative he does not deal at all, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... a wailing, inarticulate chant, swaying their bodies to the accent. The men join them somewhat reluctantly, all save Red Cloud, who betrays vexation, and War Chief, who betrays truculence.) ...
— The Acorn-Planter - A California Forest Play (1916) • Jack London
... British when he was half Celt; he struck you as overbearing when he was only top-heavy; he spoke as if he was angry when he was only in fun, as you could see by his eyes. Little babyish blue eyes they were with curly corners, a gay light in the sombre truculence of his ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... queer truculence; and Cally, desperate with the need to drive home her meaning, swept on with ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... of ruffians named Phillips and Maule, who rode into camp one day, and started a claim upon the other side of the stream. They outgulched the Gulch in the virulence and fluency of their blasphemy, in the truculence of their speech and manner, and in their reckless disregard of all social laws. They claimed to have come from Bendigo, and there were some amongst us who wished that the redoubted Conky Jim was on the track once more, ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle |
