"Truculent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... moneys and mortgaging property, and, later, these and older obligations fall due, and, failing payment, he is sued, and thereafter for some years he fights a stubborn rearguard fight with pursuing fate in the form of truculent ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... Minister of War permitted this exhortation to sink in. Then, apparently reassured, he sat up in bed and eyed his untimely visitor with a glare little short of truculent. ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... contemporary, "to see the great man tackle a tramp. Then he scented the battle from afar, bearing down on the enemy with a quivering nostril. If the nomad happened to be a gypsy he was courteously addressed. But were he a mere native tatterdemalion, inclined to be truculent, Borrow's coat was off in a moment, and the challenge to decide there and then who was the better man flung forth. I have never seen such challenges accepted, for Borrow was robust and ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... alive, and, more than that, to drop continual hints of his enemy's secret murderous purpose, until he was wrought up to a kind of frenzy of mingled fear and rage. And being of a suspicious and somewhat truculent temper, he one day all at once turned on me as the immediate cause of his miserable state, suspecting perhaps that I only wished to make an instrument of him. But I was strangely bold and careless of danger then, and only mocked at his rage, telling him proudly that I feared him not; that Runi, his ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... I'm safe when I'm handled right, but if I'm handled wrong—" Stickney did not finish his sentence; but his truculent air was pregnant ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... with the riotous. United States District-attorney Austin (when Wendell Phillips's name is written in letters of light on one side of the monument, down low on the other side, and spattered with dirt, let the name of Austin also be written) made a truculent speech, and justified the mob, and ran the whole career of the sewer of those days and justified non-interference with slavery. Wendell Phillips, just come to town as a young lawyer, without at present any practice, practically unknown, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... Asiatic Sweet Waters you must go by boat, or rather by caique, a peculiar little frail cockle-shell of a conveyance, rowed by the most truculent-looking and unmitigated ruffians, Turkish or Grecian, to be found on any waters or in any land, Christian or heathen. Picturesque in costume and exceedingly ragged and dirty, with the most cut-throat expression of face ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... Phoenix. With unquestionable courage, Gorst, acting on Grey's orders, issued a sheet in opposition, entitled Te Pihoihoi Mokemoke, or The Lonely Lark. Fierce was the encounter of the rival birds. The Lark out-argued the Phoenix. But the truculent Kingites had their own way of dealing with lese majeste. They descended on the printing-house, and carried off the press and type of Te Pihoihoi Mokemoke. The press they afterwards sent back to Auckland; of the type, it is said, they ultimately made bullets. ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... demanded an individual in top-boots, a large man chiefly remarkable for a pair of fierce, black whiskers and a truculent eye. ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... modishly enough to show off her spare but good figure, she was supposed to represent the model of pious, scholastic refinement. The Opposition—sullen in ditches and at the doors of saloons, or in the fields truculent as their own cattle—nevertheless had lowered their crests and buttoned their coats over their revolutionary red shirts when SHE ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... lozenges, and become the Herod of the village innocents. One of his many eccentricities is a love for flowers, and he visits me often to have a look at my greenhouse and my borders. I listen to his truculent and revolutionary speeches, and take my revenge by sending the gloomy egotist away with a nosegay in his hand, and a gay-coloured flower stuck in a button-hole. He goes quite ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... haughty with the pride of esthetic cleverness, and humble with the sense of their unworthiness in the wide old-world of art. Lee was contemptuous of wealth when they had a pot of beans in the house, and Frank was imperiously truculent when borrowing ten dollars from a friend or demanding an advance of cash from a prospective patron. They both came of long lines of native American ancestry, and not only felt themselves as good as ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... their knives and made shift to attack me. But I flung myself on to one of the mules of the litter, and showing them the stout Pistoja dagger that I carried, I presented with it a bold and truculent front, no whit intimidated by their numbers. Four to one though they were, they thought better of it. A moment they stood off, consulting among themselves; then Giacopo mounted, and with some mocking counsel as to how I should dispose of the litter and the mules, ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... ye uphold the insensate Achilles, Brutal, perverted in reason, to every remorseful emotion Harden'd his heart, as the lion that roams in untameable wildness; Who, giving sway to the pride of his strength and his truculent impulse, Rushes on sheep in the fold, and engorges his banquet of murder; So has the Myrmidon kill'd compassion, nor breathes in his bosom Shame, which is potent for good among mortals, as well as for evil. Dear was Patroclus to him, but the mourner that buries a brother, Yea, and the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... muttered in no doubtful language, interpreted by my colleague of "Le Temps," who knew Turkish, what they would be glad to do with us. As we sat eating our lunch in the shelter of a hovel by the roadside, while the horses were baiting, a party of the fanatics watched us with growing malignity and a truculent interchange of sentiments of an evidently unfriendly nature. To puzzle them as to our status, I took the pains to repeat in conversation with my colleague the formula of adherence to the faith as it is ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... godly venture. Whitefield warned Pepperrell that he would be envied if he succeeded and abused if he failed. The Reverend Thomas Prince openly regretted the change of enemy. 'The Heavenly shower is over. From fighting the Devil they needs must turn to fighting the French.' But Parson Moody, most truculent of Puritans, had no doubts whatever. The French, the pope, and the Devil were all one to him; and when he embarked as senior chaplain he took a hatchet with which to break down the graven images of Louisbourg. In the end Whitefield warmed up enough ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... a tall man, of massive and powerful build, with somewhat harsh features, black hair and beard just touched with grey, and a sallow complexion sunburnt as brown as a berry. According to the prevalent fashion in those latitudes, he wore truculent-looking boots up to his knees, and a big sombrero hat slouched over his brow. There was a stern, hard expression about his face, except when he smiled or looked at Barbara Thorne. He did not look stern now, as ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... and he was left to whatever fate might befall him. When he succeeded in extricating himself from that perilous position, he found that the Khedive was so annoyed at his inability to exact from his truculent neighbour a treaty without any accompanying concessions, that he paid no attention to him, and seized the opportunity to hasten the close of his appointment by wilfully perverting the sense of several confidential suggestions made to his Government. The plain explanation of these miserable intrigues ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... shoulders slightly forward. This, in turn, projected his eager, nervous countenance. The fact that he was accustomed to hold his hands half open, with the palms square to the rear, lent him a peculiarly ready and truculent air. His name, as has been said, was Richard Darrell; but ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... to touch. It is an awful thought that human nature may so steel itself against the whole armoury of divine weapons as that favour and severity are equally blunted, and the heart remains unpierced by either. It is an awful thought that there may be induced such truculent obstinacy of love of evil that, even when in 'a land of uprightness,' a man shall choose evil, and forcibly shut his eyes, that he may not see the majesty of the Lord, which he does not wish to see because it condemns his choice, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... lines. Buonarroti himself was not responsible for these results. He wrought out his own ideal with the firmness of a genius that obeys the law of its own nature, doing always what it must. That the decadence of sculpture into truculent bravado was independent of his direct influence, is further proved by ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... in one direction and sent me off with part of the force in another direction, while the remainder stayed in camp guarding the impedimenta. I tumbled across a few snipers, and we enjoyed a harmless scrap; but Walter butted into a whole lot of truculent burghers. These were being reinforced and were full of fight, so he decided to retire, and also to retire the camp; but the message directing me to conform unfortunately went astray. The result was that ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... every religion is good and true, if it serves the high purpose of its founder. And they are false, all of them, when they serve the low purpose of their high priests. Take the lowest of the Arab tribes, for instance, and you will find in their truculent spirit a strain of faith sublime, though it is only evinced at times. The Beduins, rovers and raveners, manslayers and thieves, are in their house of moe-hair the kindest hosts, the noblest and most generous of men. They receive the wayfarer, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... formed the major part of the constabulary of Trinidad, and whose bitter hatred of the older residents had been not only plainly expressed, but often brutally exemplified, rejoiced in the opportunity thus afforded for giving effect to their truculent sentiments. At that time the bulk of the immigrants from Barbados were habitual offenders whom the Government there had provided with a free passage to wherever they elected to betake themselves. The more intelligent of the men flocked to the Trinidad [87] ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... of the castle. They had greeted his return amongst them with sneers and derisive allusions to his immersion, but with a few choicely-aimed blows he had cuffed the noisiest into silence and a more subservient humour. He had spoken to them in a rasping, truculent tone, issuing orders that he meant should be obeyed, unless the disobeyer were eager for ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... Constantinople, and the Turkish official to whom the orderly took us wrote, without question, a permission to cross to Chanak Kale, we sailed with no misgivings. Alas for Troy and looking down on a modern battle from the heights of Ilium! A truculent major of gendarmes hurried us from the Asiatic shore as if we had come to capture it. We might not land, we might not write a note to the commandant to see if the permission to stop in Chanak, for which we had wired to Constantinople ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... supplied the advanced guard on the 19th, and duly started for Johannesburg, but a message very shortly came ordering a left incline, and nominating Krugersdorp as our objective. It was disappointing, but General Mahon had reported the Krugersdorpers 'truculent,' and we had to make a demonstration. This we most certainly did, halting above the railway, just outside the town, and then—producing drums and fifes—forming up and marching through to 'St. Patrick's ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... at her grandmother expectantly, but there was no answering glance. The old lady was evidently in one of her truculent ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... astonishment and wonder. But since they did not immediately proceed to plunge their swords into his breast, the brazen side of his character asserted itself. Passing the sleeve of his uniform over his face he pulled himself together, His truculent glance turned slowly here and there, checked the noise where it fell; and the stiff body of the late Senor Hirsch, merchant, after swaying imperceptibly, made a half turn, and came to a rest in the midst of awed murmurs ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... Order of the Golden Spur from his Holiness—was a tall spare man of a striking, if truculent, presence, with a high forehead, prominent eyebrows, densely black, cheekbones like razors, a complexion of walnut, and burning dark eyes. He carried his head high, and punctuated his vivacious utterances with snorts and free expectoration. He was, as I had seen at once, very much ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... people's minds had had a little time to cool, they were ready enough to acknowledge their mistake in imagining a similarity between General Blood-and-Thunder's truculent physiognomy and the benign visage on the mountain-side. But now, again, there were reports and many paragraphs in the newspapers, affirming that the likeness of the Great Stone Face had appeared upon the broad shoulders of a certain eminent statesman. ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... admiration; and his sounding boasts that he had "only seen the backs of his enemies," and that he had "gone to look for the rebel, Jackson"—were really taken to mean what they said. When Pope did at last "find the rebel, Jackson," the hopeful public over the Potomac began to believe that their truculent pet might have simply paraphrased ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... at the head of which sat the coroner, while one side was occupied by the jury; and I was glad to observe that the latter consisted, for the most part, of genuine working men, instead of the stolid-faced, truculent "professional jurymen" who so often grace ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... colored districts. My white neighbor glares elaborately. I walk softly, lest I disturb him. The children jeer as I pass to work. The women in the street car withdraw their skirts or prefer to stand. The policeman is truculent. The elevator man hates to serve Negroes. My job is insecure because the white union wants it and does not want me. I try to lunch, but no place near will serve me. I go forty blocks to Marshall's, but the Committee of Fourteen closes Marshall's; ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... illustrate his courage and fidelity, but it may not be considered appropriate to the time and the occasion. It is cheering, however, to believe that in this exalted body there is not to be found that spirit of truculent uncharitableness which refuses any credit to ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... Diccon, a merry-seeming fellow but with a truculent eye. "Look 'ee, Job, here's a match for Pompey at last, as I do think, man to man, bare fists or knives, a ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... axes, and going through the pantomime of slaying an enemy. They are of fair physique, though tall and gaunt rather than sturdy of build. And—is it a mere accident, or in accordance with some custom—not one there present—whether among the truculent crew executing the dance or among the women in the background, appears to ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... viz., the index and thumb turned toward the body, passed up from the abdomen to the throat; but in the one case, being made with a gentle motion and pleasant look, it meant, "I am satisfied," and granted the request; in the other, made violently, with the accompaniment of a truculent frown, it read, "I have had enough of that!" But these two meanings might also have been expressed by different intonations of the English word "enough." The class of signs now in view is better exemplified by the French word souris, which is spelled and pronounced precisely the same with the two ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... himself watching the wherry. "We are more than a match for them in oars, even if their purpose be such as you suspect—for which suspicion, when all is said, there is no ground. On then!" He addressed himself to the watermen, whipping out a pistol, and growing truculent in mien and voice. "To your oars! Row, you dogs, or I'll pistol ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... M. Upp, a close and long observer of wild things wishes it distinctly understood that while the common black-snakes and racers are practically harmless to birds, the Pilot Black-Snake, —long, thick and truculent,—is a great scourge to nesting birds. It seems to be deserving of death. Mr. Upp speaks from personal knowledge, and his condemnation of the species referred to is quite sweeping. At the same time Mr. Raymond ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... moment I felt that my tone was truculent, and almost hesitated; but as I saw no anger or indignation on my Lady's face, but rather an eager approval, I was reassured. A woman, after all, is glad to see a man strong, for all belief in him ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... has been moving at an accelerated rate in the direction not of national isolation and self-reliance resting on a warlike equipment formidable enough to make or break the peace at will—such as the more truculent and irresponsible among the politicians have spoken for—but rather in the direction of moderating or curtailing all national pretensions that are not of undoubted material consequence, and of seeking a common understanding ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... ear, but as Germany personified, an angel with a flaming sword, beating back envious assailants from the beloved Fatherland. He saw his neighbors not as peaceful nations who had no possible desire to attack him, but on the contrary lived in constant fear of him, but as a band, of envious and truculent conspirators who could only be kept in order by the sudden stamp of the jackboot and the menacing clatter of the sabre. He insensibly imbibed the Nietzsche doctrine that the immorality of the Superman may be as colossal as his strength and that the slave-evangel ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... to mend," she muttered quoting one of the old saws always on her lips. Then without raising her head, she added in the peevish, truculent tone of a thwarted child: "You had better go back in there before they come and get you. I am nothing but a servant, and as such I know my place and keep it. I am less than a servant, for they wouldn't dare do to Lena ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... mistaken. He had crept one rainy night into an apple-barrel on deck, and from this place of ambush overheard Soutar and a comrade conversing in their oilskins. The smooth sycophant of the cabin had wholly disappeared, and the boy listened with wonder to a vulgar and truculent ruffian. Of Soutar, I may say tantum vidi, having met him in the Leith docks now more than thirty years ago, when he abounded in the praises of my grandfather, encouraged me (in the most admirable manner) to pursue his footprints, and ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... experience and has left us the same record. 'I keep my body under': so our emasculated English version makes us read it. But the visual image in the masterly original Greek is not so mealy-mouthed. I box and buffet myself day and night, says Paul. I play the truculent tyrant over a lewd and lazy slave. I hit myself blinding blows on my tenderest part. I am ashamed to look at myself in the glass, for all under my eyes I am black and blue. If David, after the matter of Uriah, had done that to himself, and ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... briskly as, cocking his hat, he assumed a still more truculent air. Then, spreading out his hands, he growled ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... traffic. The clangor of the overhead trains—almost incessant at this hour—benumbed the ear, and every side-street rang with the hideous clatter of drays and express-carts, each driver, each motor-man, laboring in a kind of sullen frenzy to reach his barn before six o'clock, while truculent pedestrians, tired, eager, and exacting, trod upon one another's heels in their ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... as Hickey turned to his two companions, one of whom was a tall, lanky chap, with straggly black hair, and bristly, unshaven chin. The other was a short, fat, rather good-natured looking little man, whose truculent chin, however, gave the lie to his incessant smile. Somehow, you felt, after a lengthy inspection of this latter, that he was by no means the amiable personage his fixed smile seemed to indicate. Small wonder, considering that his smile was fixed upon his face by reason of an old knife wound, which, ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... but remained in the vicinity of the place of landing, which may be supposed to have been some point on the southern coast of Kyushu. Nor does there appear to have been any collision between the two tides of immigrants, for the first appearance of the Kumaso in a truculent role was in A.D. 81 when they are said ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... wine and destroyed him. But he was the man whose mind conceived, and whose will executed, the Napoleonic stroke of tactics which crumpled up the Conservative army in 1896 and put it in the hole which had been dug for the Liberals. On the day in March, 1895, when the Dominion government issued its truculent and imperious remedial order, Tarte said to the present writer: "The government is in the den of lions; if only Greenway will now shut the door." At that early day he saw with a clearness of vision that was never afterwards clouded, the tactics that meant victory: "Make the party policy suit the ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... is altogether in family life, and the events of the play have their first origin in family feuds. Filmy as are the eyes of party-spirit, at once dim and truculent, still there is commonly some real or supposed object in view, or principle to be maintained; and though but the twisted wires on the plate of rosin in the preparation for electrical pictures, it is still a guide in some degree, an assimilation to ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... impossibility of those particular bullocks loafing on his paddock. If they came across the river again, he would hunt them back into Mondunbarra—he would do that much—but Muster M'Intyre's orders were orders. Two bullock drivers (here a truculent look came over the retainer's face) had selected in sight of the very wool-shed; and now all working bullocks found loafing on the run were to be yarded at the station—this lot being specially noticed, for Muster M'Intyre had a bit of a derry ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... his questioner, and the instinctive antagonism of race vibrated in his truculent reply. The carter was a beery-faced, untidy-looking brute, but powerfully built and with huge shoulders. Sir Timothy, straight as a dart, without overcoat or any covering to his thin evening clothes, looked like a stripling in ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... unchanged as the actors. I can see the same Othello to-day, if I choose, that when I was a boy I saw smothering Mrs. Duff-Desdemona with the pillow, under the instigations of Mr. Cooper-Iago. A few stone heavier than he was then, no doubt, but the same truculent blackamoor that took by the thr-r-r-oat the circumcised dog in Aleppo, and told us about it in the old Boston Theatre. In the course of a fortnight, if I care to cross the water, I can see Mademoiselle Dejazet in the same parts I saw her in under Louis Philippe, and be charmed ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... member of the Great Sanhedrin. Another is one Bartimaeus, from southern Jericho, whose finger tips have been his eyes, till the Lord has healed his blindness. A third has been a demoniac among the hills of the Gergesenes, and has been a wandering and truculent challenge to his times. A woman is there from Jacob's well, with Salome and Susanna and the virgin mother herself. They are from southern Bethlehem; they have come from the wild hills of Peraea, beyond the Jordan; many are from Galilee, where Christ has found so many devoted followers. ...
— An Easter Disciple • Arthur Benton Sanford
... did not please them from the very first. With alarm I observed them talking to one another, and pointing at me. At length a particularly truculent-looking individual, with an enormous mustache, approached me, and, fixing his eyes long and steadfastly upon my trousers, he remarked, in the surliest possible tones, "Them breeches is a d——d bad colour." This he said in allusion, not to their dirty state, but to the fact of their being ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... on the knee of the night porter, a personage wearing a kind of livery, a strongly built, truculent-looking villain, whose duties, no doubt, comprised the putting of people out as well as the letting them into ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... the brains, where the troops were the limbs; this thoroughfare had been of his planning, and over it, back into Treves, had returned a victorious, not a defeated, army. The iron hand of the Archbishop had come down on every truculent noble in the land, and every castle gate that had not opened to him through fear, had been battered in by force. Peace now spread her white wings over all the country, and where opposition to his Lordship's stubborn ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... unsuccessful effort to enter Chicago society, his self-acknowledged Philadelphia record, rendered the sensitive cohorts of the ultra-conservative exceedingly fearful. In Schryhart's Chronicle appeared a news column which was headed, "Plain Grab of City Tunnel Proposed." It was a very truculent statement, and irritated Cowperwood greatly. The Press (Mr. Haguenin's paper), on the other hand, was most cordial to the idea of the loop, while appearing to be a little uncertain as to whether the tunnel should be granted without compensation or not. Editor Hyssop felt called upon to insist that ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... the drinkers of the inn had his own individuality of swagger, his truculent independence of mien, which suggested a man by no means habitually used either to receive commands or to render unquestioning obedience. Each of the men resembled his fellows in a certain flamboyant air of ferocity, ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... into a fit of laughter, when following the direction of his eye, we looked up, and espied an enormous parrot perched upon a purau branch, directly over our heads, from which he eyed us with a disdainful and truculent air. ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... Primitive Culture of my friend Mr. E. B. Tylor. Mr. Tylor quoted(1) a passage from Captain John Smith's History of Virginia, as given in Pinkerton, xiii. pp. 13-39, 1632. In this passage no mention occurs of a Virginian deity named Ahone but "Okee," another and more truculent god, is named. I observed that, if Mr. Tylor had used Strachey's Historie of Travaile (1612), he would have found "a slightly varying copy" of Smith's text of 1632, with Ahone as superior to Okee. I added in a note (p. 253): "There ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... avaricious and want to go home with my wallet full. Then I'm tired of my job. I suppose it's a foreman's privilege to insult his gang, but the brute we've got is about the limit. He's truculent but not very big, and some day, if I stop on, I'll pitch the hog into the river. Then I'll certainly get fired, and there'll be an end to ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... began to dawn upon him that they could not be beggars, for if so, they would have been the most truculent-looking party that ever asked for the contributions of the charitable. One, who seemed to be their leader, was a fierce, grizzled, red-nosed fellow, wearing a rusty morion, in which, for want of a feather, a tuft of heather was stuck; he wore a long cloak, as rusty-looking as his helmet; ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... He ripped up the foreign corset in a truculent manner. He said that American corsets were far superior, only American women had not the sense to see it. The effect of taking off the duty on corsets would be to take ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various
... in charge of our laager hated the verdamnt Englaender and lost no opportunity of bulldozing and threatening us. One of the Canadians who had been in the American Navy was unusually truculent. The German purposely bunted him one day. "Don't do that again!" The German repeated the act. The sailor jolted him in the jaw so that he went to dreamland for fifteen minutes. The prisoner was taken to the guardroom and we never heard his ultimate fate, ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... spent a number of years with a firm in the Far East, where he had acquired a liver and a habit of addressing those under him in a way that suggested the mate of a tramp steamer. Even on the days when his liver was not troubling him, he was truculent. And when, as usually happened, it did trouble him, he was a perfect fountain of abuse. Mike and he hated each other from the first. The work in the Fixed Deposits was not really difficult, when you got the hang of it, but there was a certain amount ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... Always truculent, to-day Brodie was plainly spoiling for trouble. King had stepped in at a moment when Brodie was in no mood to brook ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... her the cockpit of Europe. She is too. In wars that were neither of her making nor her choosing she has borne the hardest blows—a poor little buffer state thrust in between great and truculent neighbors. To strike at one another they must strike Belgium. By the accident of geography and the caprice of boundary lines she has always been the anvil for their hammers. Jemmapes and Waterloo, to cite two especially conspicuous ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... death thou thyself diest!... O lamentable day of Venus! O cruel planet! this day has been thy night, this Venus thy venom; by her wert thou vulnerable!... O woe and more than woe! O death! O truculent death! O death, I wish thou wert dead! It pleased thee to remove the sun and to obscure the ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... could bring together no reasons for the mind inclining to the thought that between the two young men there had risen an antagonism of some sort, nothing serious but still armed with spikes of light in the eyes and a semi-truculent angle to the chin. Fitzgerald was also aware of this apparency, and it annoyed him. Still, sometimes instinct guides more surely than logic. After all, he and Breitmann were only casual acquaintances. ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... are never apologetic," Osborn said dryly. "As a rule, they're not truculent, but ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... the English college at Douai, where he remained three years and took his M.A. degree. While at Douai he wrote a scurrilous attack on Queen Elizabeth, which caused a riot among the English students. But, if his truculent character was thus early displayed, his abilities were no less conspicuous; and, though still in his teens, he became lecturer on the Humanities at Tournai, whence, after but a short stay, he returned to Paris, to take his degree of doctor of canon law, and become ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... garments of civilisation, the Admiral thought that their skins would be as white as those of the women of Spain—which was only another argument for bringing them within the fold of the Holy Catholic Church. The men were powerful and apparently harmless; they showed no truculent or suspicious spirit; they had no knowledge of arms; a thousand of them would not face ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... is shaved to the bone; his face, of the Semitic type, is most sinister, truculent, and ferocious; his filthy Afghan rags bristle with knives and tulwars. He carries five or six matchlocks under one arm, and a hymn book, or Koran, under the other. He is in holy orders—a Ghazi! A pint, or a pint and a half, of my blood, would earn for him Paradise, with sharab, houris, and all ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... he had seemed to see—the confederate of him who had entered Number 9; a sentry to forestall interruption? If so, the fellow lacked discretion, though his determination that the American should not interfere was undeniable. It was with an ugly and truculent manner, if more warily, that ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... supported by a sex that compensates for dislike of its friend before a certain age by a cordial recognition of him when it has touched the period. A phalanx of great dames gave him the terrors of Olympus for all except the natively audacious, the truculent and the insufferably obtuse; and from the midst of them he launched decree and bolt to good effect: not, of course, without receiving return missiles, and not without subsequent question whether the work of that man was beneficial to the country, who indeed tamed the bumpkin squire ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... correspondence; it is too far away from us, and perhaps not yet far enough, in point of time and manner; the imagination is baffled by these stilted literary utterances, warming, in bravura passages, into downright truculent nonsense. Clarinda has one famous sentence in which she bids Sylvander connect the thought of his mistress with the changing phases of the year; it was enthusiastically admired by the swain, but on the modern mind produces mild amazement and alarm. "Oh, Clarinda", writes Burns, "shall we ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... morrow or for the moving world outside the narrow circle of his family experiences. With the appearance of British paramountcy at the Cape came a hint of law and order, of progress and its accompaniment—taxation. The bare whisper of discipline of any kind was sufficient to send the truculent Boer trekking away to the far freedom of the veldt. Quantities of them took to their lumbering tented waggons, drawn by long teams of oxen, and put a safe distance between themselves and the new-comers. All they wanted ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... the tenth day I assured the people that we were close to food; cheered the most amiable of them with promise of abundant provender, and hushed the most truculent knaves with a warning not to tempt my patience too much, lest we came to angry blows; and then struck away east by north through the forest, with the almost exhausted Expedition dragging itself weakly and painfully behind ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... year of grace 1140 a German army, under Conrad III., emperor, laid siege to the small town of Weinsberg, the garrison of which resisted with a most truculent and disloyal obstinacy. Germany, which for centuries before and after was broken into warring factions, to such extent that its emperors could truly say, "uneasy lies the head that wears a crown," was then divided between the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... had said the last word on this subject, and hence I intended to say no more. But it appears that I was mistaken. It appears, from a somewhat truculent letter which I have received from a correspondent, that I have not yet even touched the fringe of the subject. Parts of this correspondent's letter are fairly printable. He says: "You look at the matter from quite the wrong point of view. There is only one point ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... cheerful as ever. What was in the waggon could not be seen, as it was covered over with buffalo robes and tarpaulin, but the detective could have sworn he saw it move, and give forth a sound not unlike a groan. Mr. Rawdon jumped down, telling a certain Jones of truculent countenance to drive on, as he guessed he'd walk the rest of the way this fine morning. The waggon drove off accordingly and at a rapid rate, while the working geologist accosted ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... consoled herself with careering about, taking a last leave of her beloved steed-a mangy-looking pony-and performing various freaks with it, then singing a truculent song of revenge, in pursuance of which she hid herself to await the bridal procession. And as the bride came on, among her attendants Dolores detected unmistakably those eyes of Gerald's! She squeezed Miss Hackett's ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at the same time with an altered version of his great poem, which he called the Gerusalemme Conquistata. He was induced to undertake this work in order to triumph over his truculent critics, the Della Cruscans, who had condemned the former version. In the Imperial Library at Vienna is preserved the manuscript of this version, with its numerous alterations and erasures, showing how laborious the task of remodelling must have been. He suppressed the touching incident of Olinda ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... accordingly, as far as his courage would carry him, he did occasionally try that mode of tragedy upon the people of Rome, by shutting up the public granaries against them. As he blended his mirth and a truculent sense of the humorous with his cruelties, we cannot wonder that he should soon blend his cruelties with his ordinary festivities, and that his daily banquets would soon become insipid without them. Hence he ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... battle was very bloody, and by Mackay's third fire, Claverhouse fell, of whom historians give little account; but it has been said for certain, that his own waiting-servant, taking a resolution to rid the world of this truculent bloody monster, and knowing he had proof of lead, shot him with a silver button he had before taken off his own coat for that purpose. However, he fell, and with him Popery, and King James's interest in Scotland."—God's Judgment ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... it?—the poor Master of the Shell was sitting in his study, very bashful, and wondering whether he would get a chance of speaking to Daisy during the day at all. She had been spirited away from under his very eyes, in the most truculent manner, by her graceless brother; and it seemed very doubtful ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... Funky Warren. I'm going to torture you," he announced with a truculent scowl and a suggestive licking ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... of being noticed and caressed as are those of more populous and civilised districts. On attempting to stroke one of these surly brutes on the head, he displayed his teeth and growled savagely at me. Yet this animal, though so truculent in temper, and asking for no kindness from his master, is just as faithful to man as his better-mannered brother in the more settled country. I spoke on that subject to ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... him. My name is Graham. I live a mile up the river and this coon has just about ruined my cornfield," was the truculent answer. ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... and a new council of seventeen was nominated, including eight bishops, four earls, four barons, and one banneret. The earls were Pembroke, Arundel, Richmond, and Hereford. Of these the Breton Earl of Richmond was the most friendly to the king, but it was significant to find so truculent a politician as Hereford making common cause with Pembroke. The most important of the four barons was Roger Mortimer of Wigmore. Lancaster though not paramount was still powerful, but his habit of absenting himself from parliaments ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... in Cork. She was of a truculent disposition, and the murdering part of piracy was much to her taste. When her husband was led out to execution, the special favor was granted of an interview with her; but her only benediction was,—"I'm sorry to find ye in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... an assistant butler in Madame du Barry's hotel at Versailles, was a sharp, sour-natured old fellow, truculent and avaricious. The spine of this man was a sort of social barometer; by its exact degree of curvature or stiffness in the presence of a guest the stable-boys and housemaids knew whether his rank was great or small, ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... an impressive display of truculent self-confidence. He had at the moment no doubt whatever that he could subdue Mr. Billing or any other insolent American. His opportunity came almost at once. Mr. Billing appeared at the door of the hotel. He looked extraordinarily cool and competent. ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... appeals," said the Major, with a truculent look. "No man shall appeal to Dick Querto till he is ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... Lord Clare was not there beside him." He stood in the midst of the ways, crying aloud, with the wisdom of his age and his genius, but there were few to heed his warnings. The sanguine innovator sneered or pitied; the truculent despot scowled or menaced; to the one his authority was an impediment, to the other his reputation was a reproach. It was a public situation as full of conflict as man ever occupied, and we are not astonished, on a nearer ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... of fifteen hundred in a single campaign, would appall any but the grim Virginian soldiers. They are veterans now. They learn the art of war in fields like Seven Pines and Fair Oaks. Even Pryor, as chivalric in action as truculent in debate, now admits that the Yankees will fight. Fredericksburg's butchery is a victory of note. All the year the noise of battle rolls, while the Eastern war is undecided, for the second Manassas ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... escape. He was asked his name; he made no answer—His profession; he was silent :—Several other questions were put, to none of which he returned any reply. Pleydell wiped the glasses of his spectacles, and considered the prisoner very attentively. "A very truculent-looking fellow," he whispered to Mannering; "but, as Dogberry says, I'll go cunningly to work with him.—Here, call in Soles—Soles the shoemaker.—Soles, do you remember measuring some footsteps imprinted on the mud at the wood of Warroch, on—November 17—, by my orders?" ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... he will soon be opposed to this truculent and dishonest court, who have kept me here as an instrument to accomplish their own wishes, but who have never intended to keep their promises and place me on the English throne. I will give you letters to Conde and recollect that whatever general ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... their own grew moody and downcast because they could not hope to marry her, while the bachelors of the Fianna stared at each other with truculent, bloodshot eyes, and then they gazed on Tuiren so gently that she may have imagined she was being beamed on by the mild eyes ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... a loftiness about CALDWELL's tone, a subdued fire in his manner when he is discussing the difference between a rate of ten shillings and one of twelve, a withering indignation for all that is false or truculent (in short, anything connected with the office of Lord-Advocate) that strangely moves the listener. The very mystery of his ordinary bearing weaves a spell of enchantment around him. For days and weeks he will sit silent, watchful, with his eye ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 14, 1892 • Various
... Gregory, Sophy, Shafto and MacNab—who was actually paying the passage out of his hoarded funds, and sternly resolved to join the Cameronians. The party were figuratively swamped by the multitude of Teutons, who had swarmed on board, already looking truculent, arrogant and victorious—drinking and toasting one another noisily in vast libations at the bar. On the wharf an immense gathering of natives assembled to speed numbers of kind and generous patrons, who (with an eye to the future) ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... the ranks of Belarab's young followers with the red skullcaps and was seen advancing toward the whites striking into an astonished silence all the scattered groups in the courtyard. But the broken ranks had closed behind him. The Illanun chiefs, for all their truculent aspect, were much too prudent to attempt to move. They had not needed for that the faint warning murmur from Daman. He advanced alone. The plain hilt of a sword protruded from the open edges of his cloak. The parted edges disclosed also the butts of two flintlock ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... to allow soldiers, either European or native, nor camp-followers without passes, to enter or leave the city." My post was constantly at the gate, where I examined passes; and while thus occupied some thirty troopers of the Mooltani Horse—wild, truculent-looking fellows, armed to the teeth—rode up demanding entrance. I explained to them what my orders were, and refused admission. Whereupon they commenced talking among themselves, and presently had the audacity to move towards the sentries with the intention of forcing their way. I was exasperated ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... his sitting-room at last, locked the door and drew a long breath of relief. Upon his ear-drums there throbbed still the yells of his enthusiastic but noisy adherents—the truculent cries of those who had heard his great speech with satisfaction, of those who saw pass from amongst themselves to a newer school of thought one whom they had regarded as their natural leader. It was over at last. He had made his pronouncement. ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... through ages by oral tradition, and finally committed—at least in part—to writing and now extant in manuscripts in his possession, there ensued at once a very emphatic expression of incredulity. Among the most truculent of the disbelievers was Dr. Johnson. He had little liking for Scotland, still less for the poetry of barbarism. In his tour of the Western Islands with Boswell in 1773, he showed an insensibility, and even a kind of hostility, to the wild beauties of Highland ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... always. The other jaguars shunned Warruk because they feared him. And being thus made an outcast intensified the black one's naturally savage and truculent disposition. ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... This vile malefactor had been ordered for execution, and the noose was already coiled for his caitiff neck, when a neighbor of his master's—a great raiser of sheep—begged for him a reprieve, kindly volunteering the use of a truculent, but valuable ram belonging to him, for the purpose of illustrating the homaeopathic theory above alluded to. At nightfall the ram was brought and turned into a paddock, where he was left fettered to the dog ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... less famous than these two worthies was Roch Braziliano, the truculent Dutchman who came up from the coast of Brazil to the Spanish Main with a name ready-made for him. Upon the very first adventure which he undertook he captured a plate ship of fabulous value, and brought her safely into Jamaica; and when at last ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... were in themselves somewhat rude. On paper I observe that they have an appearance almost truculent. But spoken as the thing framed in the window-sill said them, they were equal to a song of Brudershaft and an episcopal benediction ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... journey I went home to The Hague with the clear conviction that one nation in Europe was ready for war, and wanted war, and intended war on the first convenient opportunity. But when would that be? Not even the most truculent government could well venture a bald declaration of hostilities without some plausible pretext, some ostensible ground of quarrel. Where was it? There was none in sight. Of course the danger of a homicidal crisis in the insanity of armaments was always there. And of course ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... Mr. Billy Warner of Ponape with his entourage of sixteen truculent, evil-faced Solomon Islanders was not regarded with enthusiasm by the chief officer and the native crew ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... were thus fruitlessly engaged, an exclamation from Telie Doe drew their attention to a spectacle, suddenly observed, which, to her awe-struck eyes, presented the appearance of the very being, so truculent yet supernatural, whose traces, it seemed, were to be discovered only on the breasts of his lifeless victims; and Roland, looking up, beheld with surprise, perhaps even for a moment with the stronger feeling of awe, a figure stalking ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... every right-minded woman's eyes. I shall speak to him myself—I will have the truth from his own lips if I have to wring it out by main force," said Caspar speaking more to himself than to Mary Trent, and quite unaware how truculent an appearance he presented at that moment to that quiet ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... 13th.—Mr. K—— called and told us that some arrangement had been made with the truculent creditor of our poor manager by which we shall not lose any more in this unlucky business. My father will be quit for about a hundred pounds. I am very sorry for Mr. Brunton, but he should not have placed us in such an uncomfortable ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... adjutant of the castle came by. He was a truculent, raw-boned man in a ragged uniform. His spluttering voice issued out of a flat yellow face. The sergeant learned from him that the condemned men would not be shot till sunset. He begged then to know what he was to do ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... affairs, a steady course to be followed between an assertion of strength that is truculent and a confession ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... is the least annoyance to you, by all means let it be shut. To me it is a matter of perfect indifference." As he spoke he pulled the window up, and then he turned on the stranger with a look that seemed to imply: "Although I seemed so truculent a few minutes ago, you see what a good-natured fellow I am at heart." In most of Captain Ducie's actions there was some ulterior motive at work, however trivial many of his actions might appear to an outsider, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... Remembering how Jernyngham had driven a truculent rabble out of Sebastian, he could imagine the scene in the shed; but it was evident that the boiler-makers bore ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... the two men, in their respective places, sat out the rest of the performance, which was also enjoyed by Mademoiselle Nioche and her truculent admirer. At the end Newman joined Valentin again, and they went into the street together. Valentin shook his head at his friend's proposal that he should get into Newman's own vehicle, and stopped on the edge of the pavement. ...
— The American • Henry James
... on. In my time I suspect his classes included a larger number than usual of bad and idle young scaramouches, who deserved to be turned out of the class, instead of the sort of over-forbearance their Professor showed. I feel sure now that a more truculent character than his would have enforced order better, with advantage to the weak and wavering pupils. He treated boys too much like human creatures—and some of us were as mischievous as monkeys. I recollect a particular instance illustrating ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... amid the stars They glower athwart the land Implacable, with 'eye like Mars To threaten and command.' Too cold, too truculent, to stay The awful bolt They fling, They make no bones about it—They Are pleased to ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... and after a brief repose she switched off the truculent side and sought the pity of the man whose life she had set herself to make one long ache if he did not yield to her arrogant pretensions. She had written in a perpetual scream of his iniquities, and was thrown over by her former associates, who saw clearly enough that ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... lightly upon the man's shoulder, brought him squarely about, his expression transiently startled, if not a shade truculent. ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... Literary Snobs? has been a question, I make no doubt, often asked by the public. How can he let off his own profession? Will that truculent and unsparing monster who attacks the nobility, the clergy, the army, and the ladies, indiscriminately, hesitate when the turn comes to EGORGER his own flesh ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... more truculent methods are represented by the story-tellers as resorted to free the afflicted household. Nothing short of fire is often deemed sufficient for the purpose. There were various methods of applying it. Sometimes we are told of a shovel being made red-hot and held before the child's ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... an advantage," Captain Nelson laughed. "When I think that you have raised your hand against that venerable but somewhat truculent prelate, I shudder at your boldness. I only caught a glimpse of him as he passed, but I could see ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... a match which proved to be fortunate. Cardan had now reached that summit of fame against which the shafts of jealousy will always be directed. The literary manners of the age certainly lacked urbanity, and of all living controversialists there was none more truculent than Julius Caesar Scaliger, who had begun his career as a man of letters by a fierce assault upon Erasmus with regard to his Ciceronianus, a leading case amongst the quarrels of authors. Erasmus he had attacked for venturing to throw doubts upon the suitability of Cicero's Latin as a vehicle ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... down over his eyes, and his chin was hidden in the upturned collar of his tattered coat. As McGraw approached him, he drew back out of the deafening clatter of the riveting-machines. McGraw followed, his heavy face of a sudden grown truculent. He came up close to ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... The truculent Dowler figured before in "The Tuggs at Ramsgate"—a very amusing and Pickwickian tale—under the title of Capt. Waters, who exhibits the same simulated ferocity and jealousy of his spouse. Cruickshank's ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... trees were breaking up under the wind, even in the tall strength of their bloom: the clouds were breaking up and losing even their large heraldic shapes. Shards and shreds of copper cloud split off continually and floated by themselves, and for some reason the truculent eye of Turnbull was attracted to one of these careering cloudlets, which seemed to him to career in an exaggerated manner. Also it kept its shape, which is unusual with clouds shaken off; also its shape was of ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... from Syria into Moesia, he could reckon as his own, and there was good hope that the other legions of Illyria would follow its lead.[394] The whole army, indeed, was incensed at the arrogance of Vitellius' soldiers: truculent in appearance and rough of tongue, they scoffed at all the other troops as their inferiors. But a war of such magnitude demands delay. High as were his hopes, Vespasian often calculated his risks. ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... lover, when he knows that his love is answered, to realise that it is all the result of some preceding molecular action of the brain? That does not seem to me so much a truculent statement as a foolish statement, shirking, like a glib and silly child, the most significant of data. And I think we shall do well to say to our scientist, as courteously as Sir Lancelot said to the officious ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... registers, and were going to consider how to put it in execution when one of the Secretaries of State came to the bar of the house, and put into the hands of the King's Council a decree of the Supreme Council which, in very truculent terms, annulled that of the union. Upon this the Parliament desired a meeting with the deputies of the other three bodies, at which the Court was enraged, and had recourse to the mean expedient ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... all this was aggravated by what went on in private. A system of espionage, whisperings, backbitings, and miserable tittle-tattle, sometimes of the most slanderous or the most ridiculous kind, was set going all over Oxford. Never in Oxford, before or since, were busybodies more truculent or more unscrupulous. Difficulties arose between Heads of Colleges and their tutors. Candidates for fellowships were closely examined as to their opinions and their associates. Men applying for testimonials ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... on my pallet at night I hear from the street the sound of passing footsteps; And I can sort and name these passing footsteps. There are the truculent steps of the seeker after trouble, There are the fearful feet of those who are not at ease In the implacable streets. There are the fugitive feet of crime, And the solemn reassuring tread of big policemen; And the interrupted steps of the revellers, And the fleet feet of those ...
— Song Book of Quong Lee of Limehouse • Thomas Burke
... Ribera—Juan de las Roelas (el Clerigo), Del Mazo—son-in-law of Velasquez, and responsible for dozens of false attributions—Carreno de Miranda, Jose Leonardo, Juan Rizi V. Iriarte, the two Herreras, the elder a truculent charlatan, the younger a nonentity, and others of the Spanish school may be ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... to say that Mr. Cassall placed a kennel on the lawn with a very large and truculent brindled bulldog as tenant; over the kennel he coiled a garden hose, and above the bulldog's portal appeared the words, "For ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... sacrifice, his pledge of future atonement, his protestations of love for his long-suffering wife, his surrender of his valuables for her benefit, his meekness of mien until the court had concluded his case and gone. Then, his sudden resumption of bold, truculent, defiant manner, his midnight breach of arrest, which had leaked out through the guard that was promptly sent forth to fetch him in; then his demand for the return of his property, and his furious outburst on learning ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... Scotch muffler from her throat, swinging her head from side to side in a sort of spuriously truculent manner, quite peculiarly her own. Her keen hazel eyes were fixed upon the face of the girl before her. Instinctively and immediately she liked Helen Cumberly; and Helen felt that this strong-looking, vaguely masculine woman, was ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... was caught by the tide between Broadstairs and Ramsgate; but some sailors came and took me off in a boat. Once again, I, who cannot claim to be physically robust, was challenged to single combat by a truculent Belgian miner of six foot three, with whom I had refused to drink pecquet; but a steam tram happened to pass opportunely, and I escaped in it. Lastly, there was my Alpine brigand. He, with all his faults, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... chuckled, and he ruffled about the ring, truculent, sneering, pausing before Varian, with a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... to turn loud and indignant, as I had been taught. Thus: my head must shoot out in truculent fashion, my brows bend, my lips curl away from my teeth like a snarling dog's, my eyes glare; and I must let my small body shake with explosive rage, in imitation of my uncle, while I brought the table a thwack with ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... it actually occurred. Elisha, otherwise Nimbi-Pamby, came; Nimbi-Pamby stayed; and Nimbi-Pamby, when he finally rejoined his own domestic circle, did not go empty-handed (so to speak), for he was accompanied on his homeward travels by a large, red, bony, somewhat truculent cow, who was tied on behind the wagon, and who made the journey a lively and eventful one by her total lack of desire to proceed over the road from Edgewood to Acreville. But that, the cow's tale, belongs to another time and ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... State swung off into the strongly-sweeping current of secessionism. The city of St. Louis remained firm a while, and returned Benton twice to the House; but his energies were exhausted now in defensive war; and the truculent and triumphant slave power dominating, the State at last succeeded, through the coercion of commercial interests, in defeating him even in the citadel of loyalty. He tried once more to breast the tide that had borne down his fortunes. He became a candidate for governor in 1856; but, though ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... meeting, he proposed as a toast, "Here's the last verse of the (p. 147) last chapter of the last Book of Kings." This would seem to be but one specimen of the freedom of political speech in which Burns at this time habitually indulged,—the truculent way in which he flaunted defiance in the face of authority. It would not have been surprising, if at any time the Government had ordered inquiry to be made into such conduct, much less in such a season of anxiety and distrust. That an inquiry was made is undoubted; ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... Engineer was a Swede, who spoke English and quoted Ibsen; and the other officers I never came specially across. There was only one of my own countrymen on board, a fireman from Hull, one of the strongest men I ever met, and certainly the most truculent ruffian. His name was Tordoff on the ship's books, but that was a "purser's name." He spoke pure English when he forgot himself, and certainly had ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... that perplexed condition about creeds which was their actual state after the political and social and religious chaos produced by Henry VIII. Gardiner is a Catholic, but not an Ultramontane; Lord William Howard is a Catholic, but not a fanatic; we find a truculent Anabaptist, or Socialist, and a citizen whose pride is his moderation. The native uncritical tendency of the drama is to throw up hats and halloo for Elizabeth and an open Bible. In place of this, Cecil delivers a well-considered analysis of the ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... awkwardness of the position, and to abandon the youth was impossible. Though it was not likely that the Duke of York would hang him if aware of his rank, he might be detained as a hostage or put to heavy ransom, or he might never be brought to the Duke's presence at all, but be put to death by some truculent underling, incredulous of a Scotsman's tale, if indeed he were not too proud to tell it. Anyway, Sir Patrick felt bound to ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... These things being so, I can pity and forgive a great deal of what appears to be, and is, so opposite to the true Christian temper, on account of its origin and cause. Especially as these very persons, who are so impetuous, and truculent almost, as partizans and advocates, are, as private Christians, examples perhaps of extraordinary virtue. We certainly know this to be the case with Macer. An apostle was never more conscientious nor more pure. Yet would he, had he power equal to ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... to see the conquered crushed and scorned by the conqueror. Hence they did not resent the truculent methods resorted to by Abdur Rahman in the consolidation of his power. In his relentless grip the Afghan tribes soon acquired something of stability. Certainly Lord Lytton never made a wiser choice than that of Abdur Rahman for the Ameership; and, strange to say, ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... he said, soothingly; for the Minister's attendant had a truculent ministerial manner. ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... blind faith in the conclusions arrived at by the learned critic, we would yet add to the considerations on which he relies another, viz. that it is most improbable that Louis XIV should ever have considered it necessary to take such rigorous measures against the Duc de Beaufort. Truculent and self-confident as he was, he never acted against the royal authority in such a manner as to oblige the king to strike him down in secret; and it is difficult to believe that Louis XIV, peaceably seated on his throne, with all the enemies of his minority under his feet, should have ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... dirty black forehead, almost concealed his savage eyes, and harmonised with his thick, betel-stained lips and cavernous, grip-sack mouth. Around his arms were two white circlets of shell, and depending from his bull-like neck a little basket containing betel-nut and lime. He certainly was a most truculent-looking scoundrel. Nevertheless, I shook hands with him cordially, and he agreed, for certain considerations, to look after me, find me in food, warn me of any danger that might impend, and also to murder anyone with whom I might feel annoyed, for a fixed ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... the field with all our forces,—determined to fight with desperate energy until every trace of rebellion was crushed out? If, disturbed at midnight by footsteps in your chamber, you start up from sound slumber to see a truculent-looking vagabond prowling about your room with a lighted candle, do you not at once spring to your feet, collar the intruder, and shout lustily for help, if he prove too strong for you? Prompt and vigorous action in such a case is simply the impulse of instinct. But how if you recognize in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... vanished forever; and he even wondered whether his grandfather may not after all have had some such scheme in mind in inviting him to visit him, believing that the presence of this midget, and the fact that she was his own true cousin, would have a wonderfully soothing effect upon the truculent spirit of the boy. ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... governments was largely with the South. In France and England, expressions had been used by leading officials which appeared to foreshadow an early recognition of the Confederacy. Seward's despatch as first drafted was unwisely angry and truculent in tone. If brought into publication, it would probably have increased the antagonism of the men who were ruling England. It appeared in fact to foreshadow war with England. Seward had assumed that England was going to take active part with the South and was at once throwing ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... not help reflecting on the change that had come over him since he first spoke to her on the night following his release from prison. Then he was rude, almost truculent; now, even while he seemed angry, his demeanour suggested a refinement of feeling which did not ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... mountebank of a King, should actually have traversed Austria from west to east, without ever a soul cased in uniform knowing anything about him, was ill to endure, and the minions of Kosnovia's truculent neighbor swore mighty oaths that no bottle holder from Paris or elsewhere should be allowed to follow. So Lord Adalbert Beaumanoir was watched from Passau to Maria Theresiopel, and telegrams flew over the face of the land, and Alec's British ally was hauled from the train at Semlin ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... the Summit coach flashed, rattled, glittered, and snapped, like a disorganized firework, up to the door of the company's office. A familiar figure, but more than usually truculent and aggressive, slowly descended with violent oaths from the box. Without seeing Jeff, ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... a thing altogether as objectionable to the eyes of a Church of England parish clergyman as the imagination of any friend or enemy could devise. We all know the abominable adjuncts of a new building,—the squalid half-used heaps of bad mortar, the eradicated grass, the truculent mud, the scattered brickbats, the remnants of timber, the debris of the workmen's dinners, the morsels of paper scattered through the dirt! There had from time to time been actual encroachments on the Vicarage grounds, and ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... over here? I reckon there wasn't anyone else to send my horse over by?" said Dakota, his voice coming with a truculent snap. ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... accent which marked him for a Gascon. "That villain of a De Rosny! But I will shew him up! I will trounce him! If the King will not, I will!" And with that he drew the hilt of his long rapier to the front with a gesture so truculent that the three bullies who had stopped to laugh resumed ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... to his heroism, and who, with the Spirit of God upon him, stands up and pointing out his wickedness, rebukes the fallen monarch for his apostasy. Joash, doubtless stung to the quick by Zechariah's just reproaches, allowed the truculent princes to slay him in the court of the Temple, even between the very shrine ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren |
