"Abruptness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... vigorous jut of heavy eye-brows meeting above full grey eyes. The eyes again, at first sight, might have struck one as too expressive, or as expressing things too purely decorative for the purposes of a young country doctor with a growing practice; but this estimate was corrected by an unexpected abruptness in their owner's voice and manner. Perhaps the final impression produced on a close observer by Dr. Stephen Wyant would have been that the contradictory qualities of which he was compounded had not yet been brought into equilibrium ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... abruptness that the two figures were torn apart, each resolved again into an individual. One, the towering man, had drawn suddenly back; the other was falling. And yet the silence was unbroken. There was never a cry to echo through the ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... he specified, as the guests invited, Lady Augustus and her daughter and Mr. Gotobed,— omitting the honourable Mrs. Morton of whose sojourn in the county he might have been ignorant. His Lordship went on to say that he trusted the abruptness of the invitation might be excused on account of the nearness of their neighbourhood and the old friendship which had existed between their families. He had had, he said, the pleasure of being acquainted with Lady Augustus and her daughter in London and would be proud to see Mr. ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... caught sight of her he said a few words to the lawyer in a somewhat different key, and descended from his vehicle. As she came up to them Mr. Dain saluted her with bashful abruptness, and her proud face broke as if by the loosing of a spell into a generous and captivating smile; Mr. Dain blushed, the vision was too much for his composure; he moved his horse forward a yard or two, and then jerked ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... tell you the truth, my good Mr. Wigglesworth," replied I, after a moment's pause, for the abruptness of the question had somewhat startled me—"to be quite sincere with you, I care little or nothing about a stone for my own grave, and am somewhat inclined to scepticism as to the propriety of erecting monuments at all over the dust that once was human. The ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... man of earnest politics, of good company, wrapped in his own scheming, not impulsive, doing nothing beyond that which he intended, without abruptness, without hard words, discreet, accurate, learned, talking smoothly of a necessary massacre, a slaughterer, ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... invalid relapsed into thoughtful silence. Then, rousing himself as if with an effort, he took a few sips of a cooling drink that stood by his side, and began with a startling abruptness. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... with an abruptness to which his elders seemed to be used. He stopped before a brass-trimmed desk and jerked at the second drawer. ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... surrender all the stateliness of her resentment. Mr. Falkland, however, drew so interesting a picture of the disturbance of Count Malvesi's mind, and accounted in so flattering a manner for the abruptness of his conduct, that this, together with the arguments he adduced, completed the conquest of Lady Lucretia's resentment. Having thus far accomplished his purpose, he proceeded to disclose to her every thing that ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... example, in his Grundriss der Psychiatrie, Theil ii., Leipzig, 1896) have explained "paranoiac" conditions by a laming of the association-organ. But the higher mystical flights, with their positiveness and abruptness, are surely products of no such merely negative condition. It seems far more reasonable to ascribe them to inroads from the subconscious life, of the cerebral activity correlative to which we as yet ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... my dear Tresham, a man aged about sixty, in a hunting suit which had once been richly laced, but whose splendour had been tarnished by many a November and December storm. Sir Hildebrand, notwithstanding the abruptness of his present manner, had, at one period of his life, known courts and camps; had held a commission in the army which encamped on Hounslow Heath previous to the Revolution—and, recommended perhaps ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... whole subject, however, with some abruptness; and the rest of our conversation in the rockery, and in the steaming orchid-house and further vineries which we proceeded to explore together, was quite refreshingly tame. Yet I think it was on this desultory tour, to the ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... seems temperamental abruptness: "Sit down. One can always think better sitting down." She catches a chair under her with a deft movement of her heel, and Miss Garnett sinks provisionally into her seat. "And I think ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... quotation shall be from the veritable Browning—of one of those poetical audacities none ever dared but the Danton of modern poetry. Audacious in its familiar realism, in its total disregard of poetical environment, in its rugged abruptness: but supremely successful, ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... daughters. Oh, I've had enough of muddy lanes and stupid local people. Give me London—and life. One doesn't live in the country, one only exists, like a vegetable. Do you like my dress?" she asked, with her irrelevant abruptness; and she cast a complacent ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... by the question, and especially by the abruptness of her father's manner of putting it, but she gave a clear and concise account of her friendship with Mona, and of her previous acquaintance with her in ...
— Hollowmell - or, A Schoolgirl's Mission • E.R. Burden
... attained an elevation of eighteen hundred feet. The lake itself was not visible until they stood upon its shores, as it lies bosomed in a deep hollow, among lofty and precipitous mountains which descend with startling abruptness to the very brink of its dark, deep waters. To cross the lake it is necessary to put one's trust in one's swimming powers, or in a curiously frail kind of boat, which the natives prepare with equal rapidity and skill. Madame Pfeiffer, however, ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... Armine's left hand with his right, and led her to the divan. Aiyoub brought coffee, lifted the golden tray from its stool, set the coffee on a smaller tray upon the stool close to the divan, and went out, carrying the golden tray very carefully. As he vanished, the music outside ceased with an abruptness, a lack of finality, that were startling to an European. The almost thrilling silence that succeeded was broken by a bird singing somewhere among the orange-trees. It was answered ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... I can get along," replied Mandy, catching off her hat and gathering up her skirt over her shoulders, "but we'll have to hustle, for I'd hate to have you get, wet." Her imperturbable good humour and her solicitude for him rebuked Cameron for his abruptness. ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... poets. Where the theme is the same, each writer will still pursue his own peculiar method. If that theme be the vengeance of God on the wicked, the style will naturally be rugged and abrupt. Yet the ruggedness and abruptness of David will not be that of Hosea or Nahum. But where both the theme and the character of the poet differ, there the diversity of style becomes very striking. To illustrate this, take the two ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... to-day aeroplane fell into Sea off Sardinia. Aeronaut killed. Companion injured. Forgive abruptness. Wished get ahead ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... standing there in the shadows, the expression of her face veiled, but there seemed no response, no softening in the rigid attitude of her figure. She did not care; was only interested in his immediate departure. The change had occurred with such abruptness, West was unable as yet to realize its full significance, but, with no attempt to combat her decision, left the room, closing the door behind him. In that moment his mood changed. The dismissal had been so curt, his pride rose in rebellion. Finding Sexton ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... stimulated these young women into a display of seeming light-heartedness? Perhaps both—certainly the latter. As for me, my one consuming thought now was to bid farewell forever to the shores of a land where war is permitted to eventuate with such abruptness and with so little consideration for visiting noncombatants. To those about me I made no secret of my desire in this regard, speaking with such intensity as to produce a ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... The abruptness of the communication evidently startled the Superior. Wynne watched him as he laid down his pen, the lines about his thin lips ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... is at the edge of comparatively still water. At the bottom of the falls the river turns an acute angle and flows to the west. At the landing it turns with equal abruptness, and ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... me, with every feeling of the most perfect respect and sincerest regard, to ask her to leave me with you for a few minutes, I shall be obliged. And if, with her usual hearty kindness, she will pardon my abruptness—" Then he could not go on, his emotion being too great; but he put out his hand, and taking hers raised it to his lips and kissed it. The moment had become too solemn for any further hesitation as to the lady's going. The Duchess for a moment ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... hear," said he, when Benedetta had concluded; and turning to the Bishop, whose departure the narrative had delayed—"you hear to what outrage the citizens of Rome are subjected. My hat and sword! instantly! My Lord, forgive my abruptness." ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... manifold brightness of the divine nature is introduced in this psalm with singular abruptness. It is set side by side with a vivid picture of an evildoer, a man who mutters in his own heart his godlessness, and with obstinate determination plans and plots in forgetfulness of God. Without a word to break the violence of the transition, side by side with that picture, the Psalmist sets ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... created; but he seizes on the attention, by showing us the effect they produce on his feelings; and his poetry accordingly gives the same thrilling and overwhelming sensation which is caught by gazing on the face of a person who has seen some object of horror. The improbability of the events, the abruptness and monotony in the Inferno, are excessive: but the interest never flags, from the continued earnestness of the author's mind. Dante's great power is in combining internal feelings with external objects. Thus the gate of hell, on which that withering ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... straightened away from the door frame which had been supporting his shoulders. "Thanks a lot, Reese." He left with the same abruptness as he had from ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... and come for good," he began. "Yes, I have come back to take all the blue ribbons at ranching," he added, with a touch of garden nonsense that came like a second thought to soften the abruptness of his announcement. ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... Lucian, his fair face crimsoning with vexation. "She seems to me one of those shallow women who would sooner flirt with a tinker than pass unnoticed by the male sex. I don't like her," he concluded, with some abruptness. ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... abruptness Liane Delorme announced that she was sleepy, it had been for her a most fatiguing day. Captain Monk rang for the stewardess and gallantly escorted the lady to her door. Lanyard got up with Phinuit to bow her out, but ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... Austrian custom house, across the frontier, we had to unroll yards of red tape before we were allowed to pass. Almost at once, when we were over the border, the scenery, the architecture, and even the people's faces, changed; not gradually, but with extraordinary abruptness, or ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the first to go. He had made less effort to disguise his preoccupation than any of us, and now his exit had something of abruptness, as if he could no longer bear to maintain any further semblance of disguise. One could only infer from the manner of his going that he passionately desired either solitude or the sole companionship of those with whom he could ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... colonists had grievances, without the means of redress. As usual, we find a land question in the shape of enhanced rents charged by Government after the British occupation; the Dutch language was excluded from official use, and English local institutions were introduced with unnecessary abruptness; but the principal grievance concerned the native tribes. Slavery existed in the Colony, and its borders were continually threatened by these tribes. The Dutch colonists were often terribly brutal to the natives; nevertheless there is little doubt that a tactful and sympathetic policy could easily ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... of large experience must have seen cases of self-created, unresisted invalidism end with mysterious abruptness and the return of mental, moral and physical competence, under the influence of some call upon their sense of duty made by calamity, such as an acute illness in the household, financial ruin, or the death of a husband. The return of a wounded man and the need ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... Mackenzie—though not pronounced—which pointed to a thief in his employment and presumably in his confidence. You will remember, sir, that when I had the honour of meeting you at Mr. Mackenzie's table, I took my leave with much abruptness. You remarked upon it, no doubt. But you will no longer think it strange when I tell you that there—under my nose—were a dozen apples of a sort which grows nowhere within twenty miles of Ardlaugh but in my own Manse garden. The ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... bows of silver from the foam. Intent to show him all her treasures, Wildenai guided him to a quiet stretch of water lying close to shore within the shadow of tall cliffs which rose at that point with precipitous abruptness ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... and lazy breakfast next morning, Roger ascended to his father's room. He found the old man lying tranquil if weak, his temperature fallen to normal with that curious abruptness characteristic of typhoid. The nurse, very fresh in a clean apron and cap, was putting the room to rights. She smiled at Roger, who was no longer a stranger, for the two had had a long talk over their coffee the evening before, and later, with Miss Clifford, ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... I beg your pardon for the abruptness of my entrance," he said, choking down his wrath. He could not allow himself to be out-done in the matter of coolness by this chit ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... and the corners of their mouths down. Dr Simmons was the dentist: you turned to the right. The passage itself turned to the left, and after passing two doors bearing the law firm's designation in black letters on ground glass, it conducted you with abruptness to the office of a bicycle agent, and left you there. For greater emphasis the name of the firm of Messrs Fulke, Warner & Murchison was painted on the windows also; it could be seen from any part of the market square, which ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... which separated the final words brought a sinking sensation at the pit of his stomach, and the discomfort of a fencer, dueling in the dark—a swordsman who recognizes that his cleverness is outmatched. His question came with a staccato abruptness. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... ceased paying out with an abruptness that jerked him clear out of the water. He fell back with a splash, all but losing hold of the rope as ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... Craig, suddenly wheeling, and startling us by the abruptness of his next exposure, "it is you and your wife here—Mrs. Prescott, not Mrs. Martin—who must have a care. Stop glaring at each other. It is no use playing at enemies longer and trying to get rid of us. You overdo it. The game ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... don't you suppose we would?" she queried, rather incoherently. "Do you think I'm doing this for fun?" Then she abruptly disappeared from sight again. The abruptness was caused by the terrible fear that if she stood looking at that sour old visage another moment she would have to spoil ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... human aspect and organization, else how could it be that, proceeding from the same stock, all shades of complexion in the skin, and variety in the form of the skull, should have arisen? Experience assures us that these are changes assumed only by slow degrees, and not with abruptness; they come as a cumulative effect. They plainly enforce the doctrine that national type is not to be regarded as a definite or final thing, a seeming immobility in this particular being due to the attainment ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... dear," said Miss Rogers, with harsh abruptness, "I am afraid I am living in this house under ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... "I haven't heard of her losin' anything at all, lately." Here he added: "Well, grandpa kept goin' on about you, and he told her——Well, so long!" And gazed after the departing Mr. Dill in some surprise at the abruptness of the latter's leave-taking. Then, wondering how the back of Noble's neck could have got itself so fiery sunburnt, Herbert returned to his researches in ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... 273. Notice the abruptness with which the leper is here introduced, just as before at the beginning of the story. The vision of "a sunnier clime" is quickly swept away. The shock of surprise now has a very different effect ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... the Alps exhibit their full stature, their commanding puissance, with such majesty as in the gates of Italy; and of all those gates I think there is none to compare with Maloja, none certainly to rival it in abruptness of initiation into the Italian secret. Below Vico Soprano we pass already into the violets and blues of Titian's landscape. Then come the purple boulders among chestnut trees; then the double dolomite-like peak of Pitz ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... produced by the working of the democratic spirit within the aristocratic constitution of society and taste may without exaggeration be described as prodigious. At first sight, indeed, there seems to be a certain abruptness in the transition from the highly organized society represented in Boswell's "Life of Johnson," to the philosophical retirement of Wordsworth and Coleridge. It is only when we look beneath the surface that we see the old ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... for its abruptness, and plunging into the subject all at once[1184]. But such arts as these have no merit, unless when they are original. We admire them only once; and this abruptness has nothing new in it. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... bulwark of the eastern frontier in ancient days, rises out of the meadows of the Meuse with something of the abruptness of the sky-scraper, and still preserves that aspect which led the writers of other wars to describe all forts as "frowning." It was built for Louis XIV by Vauban. He took a solid rock and blasted out redoubts and battlements. The generations that followed him dug into the living ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... more at ease, St. John dropped the concentrated abruptness of his manner, and explained that Bennett was a man who lived in an old windmill six miles out of Cambridge. He lived the perfect life, according to St. John, very lonely, very simple, caring only for the truth of things, always ready to talk, and extraordinarily modest, though ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... half brother only [he turns away from Mangan with his usual abruptness, and collects the empty ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... interrupted the young officer, little divining to what all this was to tend, and feeling not altogether at his ease, from the abruptness with which the subject had been introduced, "I feel as I ought, the interest you profess to take in me, but how is that connected either with my asserted absence, or the reproof ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... a blunt woman by nature, and it was only by great effort that she had become fine-edged. So she said to Miss West, with a sort of naive abruptness, "I'll tell you what, Miss West, we'll have cake to tea, because there are only you and I, and it is the first night of the holidays; and we'll have a strong cup, since we have all the teapot to ourselves. I think I shall try my hand this week at some of my old tea-cakes and pies and things which ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... sigh of rising wind passed through the house like a sucked breath of triumph. Windows and doors drew in and out against their frames with a rattling crash, then hung still with unnatural abruptness. Absolute stillness succeeded. I felt a very slight shock, as if the ground at ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... The matter has been considered from that angle. 'I have been warm all night,' wrote Leigh Hunt, 'and find myself in a state perfectly suited to a warm-blooded animal. To get out of this state into the cold, besides the inharmonious and uncritical abruptness of the transition, is so unnatural to such a creature that the poets, refining upon the tortures of the damned, make one of their greatest agonies consist in being suddenly transported from heat to cold—from fire to ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... the accent double this force, and render it characteristic of passion and abruptness. And here comes into play the reader's corresponding fineness of ear, and his retardations and accelerations in accordance with ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... expression that had occurred. My senses assured me of the truth of them; and yet their abruptness and improbability made me, in my turn, somewhat incredulous. The adventure had made a deep impression on my fancy; and it was not till after a week's abode at my brother's that I resolved to resume the possession of my ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... no necessity for it, as I do not see that your feelings have been excited to madness by my appearance. So far, then, all is well. And now to come to the point; and you, I am sure, will be the first to excuse my abruptness in doing so. The unfortunate bond that binds us is painful enough to you. It is enough for me to say that I have come home for two reasons: first, to see my home, possibly for the last time; and secondly, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... introduction of such rhymes. The lines (again of set purpose, it is evident) overlap one another without an end-pause where in Italian it is almost universal, namely, after the sixth line. The result of the innovation is far from successful: it destroys the flow of the verse and gives it an air of abruptness. Of the liveliness, vivacity and pungency of the tale, no idea can be given by quotation: two of the stanzas in which the moral is enforced, the two finest, perhaps, in the poem, are, however, severable ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... the key," said Magdalen, passing from the imitation at the breakfast-table to the post-bag on the sideboard with the easy abruptness which ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... here, Fenn?" he asked, with an abruptness which brought a flush to the latter's face. "Why are you ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... to relieve her feelings, and she sat down before the machine, which clicked and rattled for several minutes under her stubby fingers. Then the clicking ceased with sudden abruptness, and she prodded the mechanism viciously with a hairpin. As this appeared unavailing she used her forefinger, and when at length the carriage slid along the rod with a clash there was a smear of grimy oil upon her cheek and her somewhat tilted nose. The machine, however, gave no further trouble, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... of the Sultan of Koetei stands in the edge of the jungle at a horseshoe bend in the river. You come on it with startling abruptness—miles and miles of primeval wilderness and then, quite unexpectedly, a bit of civilization. In no respect does its exterior come up to what you would expect the palace of an Oriental ruler to be. It is a great barn of a place, two stories in height, ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... the tortuosity of the Linggi or the abruptness of its windings. The boatmen measure the distance by turns. When they were asked when we should reach the end they never said in so many hours, but ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... better acquainted with his brother's character than Newton, took no notice of the abruptness ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... queer; what could it mean? We walked toward the small blockhouse in time to see Tallmadge and several soldiers conduct a cloaked prisoner into the fort. A little later the major came out, and at once asked me to excuse his abruptness, saying that he had in charge Sir Henry Clinton's adjutant-general, who had been caught acting as a spy, and was now about to be taken to Tappan. ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... met him she had teased him about it, asking who it was he took after, and such-like questions; and Tony had replied with an abruptness which was so unusual in him that she had at first felt amused, until it began to rankle. Then she resented it, and when they met again, she was equally abrupt to him as he had been to her, and had, ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... which he knew that words could only indicate, not express. Out of such a temper of mind arose his celebrated utterance, "All things fleet away," which Plutarch explains thus: "We do not dip twice into the same wave, nor can we touch twice the same mortal being. For through abruptness and speed it disperses and brings together, not ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... were steering towards Mount Upstart, and at noon passed within two miles of its extremity. Behind the Mount, which rises with remarkable abruptness from the low land in its rear, are two prominent hills; the highest of which, Mount Abbott, has a peaked summit; the irregular and mountainous appearance of the range upon which this Mount stands, and a very evident break in the hills on its ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... home now," Joe Durgan replied tersely, with the abruptness of one who has done an irksome duty and would avoid further ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... walks with his hands resting on Ramuntcho's shoulder. Interested and ardent for success, since the sum has been agreed upon, Itchoua whispers in Ramuntcho's ear imperious advices. Like Arrochkoa, he wishes to act with stunning abruptness, in the surprise of a first interview which will occur in the evening, as late as the rule of a convent will permit, at an uncertain and twilight hour, when the village ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... set, his eyes wide, waiting for the foundering of the schooner, his only thought being that the end could not be far. He had heard of the suddenness of tropical squalls, but this had come with the abruptness of a scene-shift at a play. The schooner veered broad-on to the waves. It was the beginning of the end—another roll to the leeward like the last and the Pacific would ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... German Tyrol begins a few miles south of Bozen. Perhaps "occurs" would be a more descriptive word, for the change from the Latin to the Teutonic, instead of being gradual, as one would expect, is almost startling in its abruptness. In the space of a single mile or so the language of the inhabitants changes from the liquid accents of the Latin to the deep-throated gutturals of the German; the road signs and those on the shops are now printed in quaint German script; via becomes weg, strada becomes strasse, instead of ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... of her personality he came out with thoughtless abruptness from the closet behind her, and looking round suddenly she beheld his shadowy fur-clad outline. At once she raised her hands in horror, as if to protect herself from him; she uttered a shriek, and turned shudderingly to the ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... effort to believe in my innocence before Patience had given his evidence. But on this point she always spoke most unwillingly and with a certain amount of reserve. However, one day she quite healed my wound by saying with her charming abruptness: ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... Libri, Cavazzola, Antonio Badile, and the rather later Brusasorci—Caliari dared combinations of colour the most trenchant in their brilliancy as well as the subtlest and most unfamiliar. Unlike his predecessors, however, he preserved the stimulating charm while abolishing the abruptness of sheer contrast. This he did mainly by balancing and tempering his dazzling hues with huge architectural masses of a vibrant grey and large depths of cool dark shadow—brown shot through with silver. No other ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... wondrousness of this tale kept me from contemplating the consequences that awaited us. My unfledged fancy had not hitherto soared to this pitch. All was astounding by its novelty, or terrific by its horror. The very scene of these offences partook, to my rustic apprehension, of fairy splendour and magical abruptness. My understanding was bemazed, and my senses were taught to distrust ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... spot in her heart for Marc Scott—most women and children had. One did not at first see why. He was not good looking, except that he was well made and well kept; not particularly pleasing in his manner, being given to an abruptness of speech which most people found disconcerting; and he liked his own way more than is conducive ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... height, and, with the exception of the Murray Gates in Australia, and a glen in Madeira, whose name I have forgotten, I have never seen among them the equal of some of the northern passes of Dartmoor for gloomy magnificence. For I consider that scenery depends not so much on height as on abruptness. ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... Then, with an abruptness that cannot be pictured, everything was blotted out in a great, blinding swirl of dust as the wind came whooping down upon them. It threw Casey as though some one had tripped him. It spun him round and round on his back like an overturned beetle, ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... went back to her work abruptly. With stern efficiency she shook out a heavy sheet and hung it up. Stooping, she picked up another one. But she did not shake out this. With the same curious abruptness that had characterized her movements a few moments before, she dropped the sheet back into the basket and came close to the fence again. "Mis' McGuire, won't you please let me take a copy of them two women's magazines that you take? That is, they—they ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... at him curiously, and a rather hard abruptness had crept into her tone, "has she, Marcia, told you anything about these?" She touched the butterflies clasped ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... the tree-tops around the spot, watching him gravely, croaking and sidling away when he moved with abruptness. Looking up into the tree-tops he saw some shreds of stuff clinging to the branches, perhaps tatters from the balloon or the dead man's clothing. Near him on the ground lay a charred heap that was once the wicker ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... Dr. Gregg politely removed their hats as Franklin entered the car and addressed Mary Ellen. Confused by the abruptness of it all, it was a moment before she recognised local requirements, and presented Franklin to the gentlemen. For an instant she planned flight, escape. She would have begged Franklin to return ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... baggage was wet, and therefore it was necessary to abandon them, and go by land. They therefore crossed the plains, and at the distance of twelve miles came to the river, through a cold storm from the northeast, accompanied by showers of rain. The abruptness of the cliffs compelled them, after going a few miles, to leave the river and meet the storm in the plains. Here they directed their course too far northward, in consequence of which they did not meet the river till late ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... children hurried across the street. They climbed the steps. At the top they turned. There were plumes and more, there were flags and swords, and a band led. But at the church, with unexpected abruptness, the band halted, turned; it fell apart, and the procession came through; it came right on through and up the steps, a line of uniforms and swords on either side from ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... dilapidated house then known as San Sisto, had caused rapid repairs to be made, and in his fervor had created round himself a nucleus of ardent reformers. The Gordian knot was referred to him, and with characteristic abruptness he promised to cut it at once. He came alone to the gates of the convent, presented no credentials from pope or cardinal, and asked an interview with the abbess. He spoke of the holiness of an austere life, the reward of those that "follow the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... no fellow for sternness and abruptness on the earth. Huge headlands, stubborn cliffs, precipitous hills rise suddenly from the sea, bold, harsh, immitigable, yet softened by their aspect of gray endurance. Hacked and scored, tossed, fissured, and torn, weather-beaten and bleached, their bluntness becomes grave, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... appeared to have left her; the sun was becoming oppressive; her white-shod feet dragged a little, which was so unusual that she straightened her head and shoulders with nervous abruptness. ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... relief to dine at home"—and Brookenham faced about. "Would you mind finding out?" he asked with some abruptness. ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... Henrietta was much too unselfish to heed the charge it conveyed; she cared only for what it intimated with regard to her friend. "Isabel Archer," she observed with equal abruptness and solemnity, "if you marry one of these people I'll never speak to ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... yet spoken of Maria in this way. Even her voice seemed to be changed. Instead of betraying the usual angry abruptness, her tones coldly indicated impenetrable contempt. In the silence that ensued, she looked up, and saw Carmina's eyes resting ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... them, it took them some time to assure themselves that one of them even could be made to work. This with some difficulty they brought round into the street before the Doctor's house. When they came out of the dim garage they were startled to find that twilight had already fallen with the abruptness of night in the tropics. Either they had been longer in the place than they imagined, or some unusual canopy of cloud had gathered over the town. They looked down the steep streets, and seemed to see a slight mist coming up from ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... was mad, and Honor shot him," Desmond answered, with cool abruptness. Her manner of parting from Kresney had set the blood throbbing in his temples. "I only had a stick to tackle him with; and she very pluckily came to ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... with intentional abruptness; "then the servants' room—you won't make a noise, will you? or you'll wake them up. Bathroom, spare room, my own room, smoking-room. No, the limits of my unconventionality are soon reached; you can finish ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... and sniffed. It rose to the dress-circle, and the dress-circle sniffed. Floating up, it smote the silent gallery. And, suddenly, coming to life with a single-minded abruptness, the gallery ceased to ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... being greater round the circumference than in the middle of the island; do you suppose the elevation has had the form of a flat dome? I remember in the Cordillera being OFTEN struck with the greater abruptness of the strata in the LOW EXTREME outermost ranges, compared with the great mass of inner mountains. I dare say you will have thought of measuring exactly the width of any dikes at the top and bottom of any great cliff (which was done by Mr. Searle [?] at St. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... said, with frank abruptness, "Charles Dulaurier, a soldier by birth and profession, lieutenant in the Grenadiers of His Majesty Charles V.—pardon me, Don Carlos. Being stationed some few miles from here, I asked for leave of absence this morning to join some troops which (pardon me) are going ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... great organ was chiaroscuro in its most extensive sense—compared with the expanse in which he floats, the effects of Leonardi da Vinci are little more than the dying ray of evening, and the concentrated flash of Giorgione discordant abruptness. The bland, central light of a globe, imperceptibly gliding through lucid demi-tints into rich reflected shades, composes the spell of Correggio, and affects us with the soft emotions of a delicious ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... a highly cultivated district. Long stretches of prairie, known as the "Low Level Plains," next met their gaze, dotted with countless sheep, and shepherds' huts. And then came a sandy tract, without any transition, but with the abruptness of change so characteristic of Australian scenery. Mount Simpson and Mount Terrengower marked the southern point where the boundary of the Loddon district cuts ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... abruptness. "I took this girl for her sake. Her short life was not wasted if another's is built upon it. That's one of my fantastic fancies, ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... especially in New York, the pettiness of ruffled vanity did not appear. Nothing could be more easy and graceful than his manner on these occasions. His expository statements, lucid, smooth, and equally free from monotony and abruptness, were models of their kind. In dealing with election frauds in New York his utterances, without growing more vehement or higher keyed, found expression in the fire of his eye and the resistless strength of his words. The proud, bold nature of the man seemed to flash out, startling ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... lips and a curious intelligence in her eyes. She admitted that she was tired, but had not been ill, and her father told me that long train journeys produced the same effect on her as a sea journey. She spoke with a pretty abruptness, and went away suddenly, I thought for good, but she returned half an hour afterwards looking a little faint, I thought, green about the mouth, and smiling less frequently. One cannot remember everything, and I have ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... train Stanton stood for a second rubbing his eyes at the final abruptness and unreality of it all. Woodstock! What was it going to ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... that illustrate his points effectively and illumined by a sense of humor which some of his friends regard as his most salient trait. His manner is marked by extreme courtesy and, in view of the fixity of his opinions, a surprising lack of abruptness or dogmatism. But he has never been able to capitalize such personal advantages in his political relations. Apart from his intimates he is shy and reserved. The antithesis of Roosevelt, who loved to meet ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour |
