"Coarseness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... prompted. Her sweet influence in the mining camp was beyond the power of human calculation to fathom. No gauge could be placed upon it. Like the sweep of an angel's wing, her coming seemed to have wafted nearly all the coarseness, wrong and ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... home to Mademoiselle de Guerchi how imminent was her danger. At first she had thought the commander's visit might be a snare laid to test her, but the coarseness of his expressions, the cynicism of his overtures in the presence of a third person, had convinced her she was wrong. No man could have imagined that the revolting method of seduction employed could meet with ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... gloriously accomplished, a lesson well learned, an act of charity repaid—anything of a dramatic nature which is as honest as daylight. Good deeds are just as dramatic as wicked deeds, and clean comedy is far and away more humorous than coarseness. Keep away from scenes of brutality, degeneracy, idiocy or anything which may bring a poignant pang of sorrow to some one of the millions of people who will see your story in the pictures, unless the pang ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... lying beneath him on its promontory of land, in the quiet shelter of its protecting trees. He stopped, and a delicate sense of harmonious association awoke in him. That girl, atoning as it were by her one white life for all the crimes and coarseness of her ancestry: the idea of her seemed to steal into the solemn golden evening and give it added poetry and meaning. The young man felt a sudden strong ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Willading, nor his noble friend, the Genoese, though educated in the opinions of their caste, and necessarily under the influence of the prejudices of the age, was addicted to the insolence of vulgar pride. Their habits had revolted at the coarseness of the majority of the travellers, and they were glad to be rid of them by the expedient of Pippo; but no sooner did the modest, decent air of the stranger who remained, make itself apparent, than they felt a desire to compensate him for the privations he had already ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... Athenaeum, really look like some of Rubens's stupendous works now in the Grosvenor collection. We have not seen these apartments since last summer, when the decorations were in a forward state. We were surprised at the coarseness of the gilding, when examined closely; we saw, too, that where one of the entrances to the Ball-room had been heightened, the original, door had been pieced, which was a work of economy we did not look for in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... for weeks, all up and down the line, and I been telling 'em they'd got you wrong. The swelled head, is it? But pardon me, Mr. Blair. Who am I to speak thus to the world's champion? Delusions of grandeur, I should say. Pardon my coarseness!" Sudden laughter split wide ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... put on with his entry into the room all his old fierceness of manner and coarseness. He shouted out his words whenever he spoke, and emphasised them with bangs of the hammer upon the table. The call for wine was answered by some of the niggers fetching in cases of champagne, and soon the stuff was running in every part of the hall. The captain waited ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... interspersed with dialogues, which, though they proceeded from the mouths of pedlars and rustics, were of the most edifying description; mostly on subjects moral or metaphysical, and couched in the most gentlemanly and unexceptionable language, without the slightest mixture of vulgarity, coarseness, or piebald grammar. Such appeared to me to be the contents of the book; but before I could form a very clear idea of them, I found myself nodding, and a surprising desire to sleep coming over me. Rousing myself, however, by a strong effort, I closed the book, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... men, penetrated the room, whilst the old rafters groaned and creaked from the heavy tramp of dancers below. All our belief in the sobriety and goodness of the Tyrolese seemed swept away, and a sense of their coarseness and dissipation to have taken its place. We were in a very pandemonium, which never ceased until the sun ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... be read with great avidity at the time, and it will ever be read with pleasure, for the sake of its composition. That it endeavoured to infuse a narcotick indifference, as to publick concerns, into the minds of the people, and that it broke out sometimes into an extreme coarseness of contemptuous abuse, is but ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... and strength, she seems to have no conception. The truth is, that, however much we may concede to the average spiritual superiority of woman, a great deal also depends on the inheritance and the training of the individual. Mrs. Farnham, like every refined woman, is often shocked by the coarseness of even virtuous men; but she does not tell us the other side of the story,—how often every man of refinement has occasion to be shocked by the coarseness of even virtuous women. Sexual disparities may be much; but individual disparities are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... more coarseness than his wife, upbraided Victorine for not striving for the rose with her sisters. "Were you but cured of your folly, child," he said, "there is no doubt of your success as Rosiere, for you are a great favourite, Victorine, ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin
... our age and country, notwithstanding the far wider and higher educational advantages enjoyed by them to-day, has been won, as of yore, in the field of prose fiction. More than a hundred years ago a veteran novelist, whose humour and observation, something redeeming his coarseness, have ranked him among classic English authors, referred mischievously to the engrossing of "that branch of business" by female writers, whose "ease, and spirit, and delicacy, and knowledge of the human heart," have not, however, availed to redeem their names from oblivion. For some of ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... of any art. All our arts and occupations lie wholly on the surface; it is on the surface that we perceive their beauty, fitness, and significance; and to pry below is to be appalled by their emptiness and shocked by the coarseness of the strings and pulleys. In a similar way, psychology itself, when pushed to any nicety, discovers an abhorrent baldness, but rather from the fault of our analysis than from any poverty native to ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unnatural that many should shrink back from them in fear. We see but too often the early beauty of the character sadly marred, its simplicity gone, its confidence chilled, its tenderness hardened; where there was gentleness, we see roughness and coarseness; where there was obedience, we find murmuring, and self-will, and pride; where there was a true and blameless conversation, we find now something of falsehood, something of profaneness, something of impurity. I can well conceive what it must be to a parent to see his child return from school, ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... the fifth century, manufacture of vases at Athens decayed. Supply chiefly from South Italy. Growing use of additional white (rare in Attic red figure vases), sometimes addition of detail in yellowish brown, and a general coarseness of execution, mark ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... dreadful dreams. Oh, Reginald! I have had such visions of horrid things and people. I shall never be romantic again about chivalry. Such coarseness!—such slavery!—such ignorance! Ah, how happy we ought to be that we are born in a civilized time, with no Mr Peepers for father confessors, nor fighting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... the forms by taking Jesus to Annas the real Jewish ruler of the nation. But it is simply an opportunity for the coarseness of their hate to vent itself upon His person. They pretend an examination here in the night's darkness suited to their deeds. He quietly reminds them of the frank openness of all ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... particularly to the Radicals, to be more explicit than I otherwise should be, if the venal press, and particularly the profligate Editors and Proprietors of that press, in order to gratify their political employers and partisans, had not, upon so many occasions, and with such brutal and savage coarseness, when they could neither answer my arguments nor contradict the truths that I promulgated, sought to cover their defeat and their infamy by accusing me of having deserted my wife, and left her to starve. Fearless of the consequences, I shall, therefore, as I go along, place the ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... sometimes turned itself on like a light and revealed the emptiness of life without Rachel, the emptiness of courtrooms, verdicts, crowds. Yes, even the emptiness of the struggle between good and evil. He sat thinking of her now, contrasting the virginal figure of her with the coarseness of the thing in which he had been engaged. There was something about her ... something ... something. And the old refrain of his dream like a haunting popular ballad, started again here in the ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... these do not by any means come alone from the Anglo-Saxon. The foes are often of his own race. It will take all the philosophy he can summon to contend with the opposition that comes from ignorance, from coarseness, from the unthinking and the malicious. It will need all his self-control and forbearance to move along under grasping, bullying ignorance that seeks to ride rough shod over superior knowledge and breeding; it will demand all his logic to meet the arguments from without ...
— The Educated Negro and His Mission - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 8 • W. S. Scarborough
... only begins to feel it when she thinks her lover is ceasing to love her. I am not sure that to reverse the whole situation would not be nearer to the truth of things; but that is matter of discussion. Then the subject-matter is sordid. Nothing relieves the coarseness of Sebald, Ottima and Luca and their relations to one another but the few descriptions of nature and the happy flash of innocence when Pippa passes by. Nor are there any large fates behind the tale or large effects to follow which might lift the crime into dignity. This mean, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... perceive the prints of human feet. They ran parallel to my own course, but low down upon the beach instead of along the border of the turf; and, when I examined them, I saw at once, by the size and coarseness of the impression, that it was a stranger to me and to those in the pavilion who had recently passed that way. Not only so; but from the recklessness of the course which he had followed, steering near to the most formidable portions of the sand, he was as evidently a stranger ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pounding white lump sugar in a mortar and shaking it through sieves of different degrees of coarseness, thus accumulating grains of different sizes. They ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... stood and looked for full twenty minutes. In some of the faces that passed him he saw only a careless sensuality brightened by the flush of excitement. Others, somewhat older, were full of brazen coarseness, and others, older still, bore that pitiful look of hopeless regret, quickly changing to one that says as plainly as can be that the time for thinking and caring has gone. Upon many was stamped the brand of inborn infamy, their ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... and acuteness of the satire, the grand object, which is seen throughout, of correcting the follies of the day, and improving the condition of his country—all these are features in Aristophanes, which, however disguised, as they intentionally are, by coarseness and buffoonery, entitle him to the highest respect from every reader of antiquity. He condescended, indeed, to play the part of jester to the Athenian tyrant. But his jests were the vehicles for telling ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... frequent accusation of coarseness brought against Fielding, we may quote a few lines of the prologue with which he made his literary entry into the world. ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... taking advantage of Pigeonswing lying down, she unloaded her brother's canoe, and went out into the river to look for the absent one. As a matter of course—though so feminine and far removed from all appearance of coarseness, a true American girl in this respect—Margery knew perfectly well how to manage a bark canoe. The habits of her life for the last few years, made her acquainted with this simple art; and strength being much less needed than skill, she ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... This woman had a form, carriage, and proportions that would have made a magnificent duchess in a coronation procession; but the face, though fresh and fair, did not correspond with the figure. The women of our own mountains excel them altogether, being a more true medium between strength and coarseness. Even Mrs. Trollope admits that the American women (perhaps she ought to have said the girls) are the most beautiful in the world, while they are the least interesting. Mrs. Trollope has written a vast deal of nonsense, putting cockneyisms into the mouths of Americans, ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... splendidly-made, opulent creature, of my own age, born for the footlights, with an extremely sweet and thrilling voice, and that slight coarseness or exaggeration of gesture and beauty which is the penalty of the stage. She did not in the least resemble a La Valliere as she stood there gazing at me, with her gleaming, pencilled eyes and heavy, scarlet lips. It seemed impossible that she could refine herself to a La Valliere. But that woman ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... hardy Norse type. Her hands were red and hard, and even beneath the coarse sleeve of the oilskin coat one could infer that the biceps and deltoids were large and powerful. She was coarse-fibred, no doubt, mentally as well as physically, but her coarseness, so Wilbur guessed, would prove to be the coarseness of a primitive rather than of a ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... collected the heavenly manna, had a corresponding effect upon the preacher himself. His words became more distinct, his manner more earnest and energetic; it seemed as if religious zeal was triumphing over bodily weakness and infirmity. His natural eloquence was not altogether untainted with the coarseness of his sect; and yet, by the influence of a good natural taste, it was freed from the grosser and more ludicrous errors of his contemporaries; and the language of Scripture, which, in their mouths, was sometimes degraded by misapplication, gave, in Macbriar's ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Leaf" is pre-eminently one of those poems by which Chaucer may be triumphantly defended against the charge of licentious coarseness, that, founded upon his faithful representation of the manners, customs, and daily life and speech of his own time, in "The Canterbury Tales," are sweepingly advanced against his works at large. In an allegory — rendered perhaps somewhat cumbrous by the detail of chivalric ceremonial, and the heraldic ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... hundred feet to the mile it does not usually exhibit these shelves of detritus. Below that rate of descent they are apt to be formed. Much, however, depends upon the amount of detritus which the stream bears and the coarseness of it; moreover, where the water goes through a gorge in the manner of a flume with steep rocky sides, it can urge a larger amount before it than when it traverses a wide valley, through which it passes, it may ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... wondrous adventures and hairbreadth escapes so dear to the small boy of all time. The thrilling incidents were further enlivened, moreover, by cuts called by the printer "curious" in the sense of very fine: and curious they are to-day because of the crudeness of their execution and the coarseness of their design. Nevertheless, the grotesque character of the illustrations was altogether effective in impressing upon the reader the doughty deeds of his old friend, Tom Thumb. The book itself shows marks of its popularity, and of the hard usage ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... deserves to be regarded as an effusion of Saturnalian licentiousness, rather than of poetry. With respect to the Iambics of Catullus, we may observe in general, that the sarcasm is indebted for its force, not so much to ingenuity of sentiment, as to the indelicate nature of the subject, or coarseness of expression. ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... words, "Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?" In these moving words, other words resounded—"I am thy brother." And the young man covered his face with his hand; and many a time afterwards, in the course of his life, shuddered at seeing how much inhumanity there is in man, how much savage coarseness is concealed beneath refined, cultured, worldly refinement, and even, O God! in that man whom the world acknowledges as ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... older generation of our politicians. During the twelve years succeeding his entry into public life he was one of the most conspicuous Reformers in the Province. Though not possessed of a liberal education, and though his demeanour and address were marred by a sort of impetuous coarseness, he was master of a rude, vigorous eloquence which under certain conditions was far more effective than the most polished oratory would have been. He was certainly the ablest stump orator of his time in this ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... and there in the crowd, sparkling with jewels, and dressed in the rich robes naturally suited to the occasion, only increased by their presence the rude incongruities of the gathering. Men were surprised at the manifestations on every hand of a vulgarity and coarseness which they had been accustomed to think the natural products and exclusive characteristics of a state of society farther north. To the eyes of the fastidious, a new class had suddenly arisen in their midst. Perhaps the lesson was not a new one. Many ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... who was shocked at her sister's coarseness, replied that he had been actuated by the noblest of motives—the desire not ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... and most unjust!" said I indignantly. "You know my chief purpose in wedding you is to take you from this wandering life and shield you from all hardship and coarseness." ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... reproached by writers for the coarseness of their taste; but our present grievance does not seem to be the want of a good taste, but of ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... specimens of local and ephemeral poetry that were printed in the colonial press in succeeding years make it easy to comprehend the failure of the project: the villanously rhymed effusions fairly imposthumate all the ribald vulgarity of the times; coarseness and dulness of subject and thought being rivalled only by the super-coarseness of the verbiage. I do not say that the newspapers provoked these stupid rhymes, which are about as much poetry as is a game of ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... haughty, presuming, tyrannizing upstart! A person of this description chanced to reside in the parish of Laracor. Swift omitted no opportunity of humbling his pride; but, as he was as ignorant as insolent, he was obliged to accommodate the coarseness of the lash to the callosity of the back. The following lines have been found written by ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... whole question of the morality or immorality of a work of fiction is a question merely of its truth or falsity. To appreciate this point, we must first be careful to distinguish immorality from coarseness. The morality of a fiction-writer is not dependent on the decency of his expression. In fact, the history of literature shows that authors frankly coarse, like Rabelais or Swift for instance, have rarely or never been immoral; and that the most immoral ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... and most effective public speakers of his day—or any day. There was an inborn fineness or sensitiveness in Lincoln, a touch of the artist (he even wrote verses) which contrasts with the phlegm of his illustrious contemporary, General Grant. The latter had a vein of coarseness, of commonness rather, in his nature; evidenced by his choice of associates and his entire indifference to "the things of the mind." He was almost illiterate and only just a gentleman. Yet by reason of his dignified modesty ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... may here be given of the coarseness with which Dekker pays back Jonson for his personal allusions. In The Poetaster, Crispinus is told that his 'satin-sleeve begins to fret at the rug that is underneath it.' In Satiromastix, Tucca cries out ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... the monks, in its coarseness and simplicity, would not commend itself to our modern dudes; but, then, life is a terrible reality to these brothers, who, hearing the voice of God, have hastened to follow his call, fully realizing, that without the one thing necessary, all ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... worthy of being compared with the scenes for which Turgeneff is renowned. His landscape pictures are so beautiful that they cause a throb of pain. But, as is almost inevitable under the circumstances, most of his stories have an element of coarseness, which sometimes repels. ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... them where they will prove effective. Oftener we put them where they have no chance to display their charms to good effect. They do not belong near the house—least of all in the "front yard." They must be admired at a distance which will soften their coarseness of habit. You must be far enough away from them to be able to take in their charms of form and color at a glance, to observe the graceful sweep of their branches against the snow, and to fully bring ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... 2 And it came to pass that after much labor among them, they began to have success among the poor class of people; for behold, they were cast out of the synagogues because of the coarseness of their apparel— ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... men of his age, though for the same reason they were, as Hamlet says, caviere to the multitude, and never did please the corrupted and malicious multitude of Athens. With a wit as brilliant and acute as that of Aristophanes, and perhaps as capable of vitious coarseness and ribaldry, he kept it in correction, and scorned to disgrace his compositions with illiberal personal aspersions, or indecent, obscene, or satirical reflections; but endeavoured to make his comedies pictures of real life, replete with refined useful instruction, and sagacious ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... ladies"—presided over, I daresay, by "Anglican clergymen." I know not how any one who has read the Morte d'Arthur can blame Tennyson in the matter. Let Malory and his sources be blamed, if to be moral is to be culpable. A few passages apart, there is no coarseness in Malory; that there are conscience, courtesy, "sweet lives," "keeping down the base in man," "amiable words," and all that Tennyson gives, and, in Mr Harrison's theory, gives without authority in the romance, ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... I have said on the editorial function (Vol. I, p. 15). What precedes and follows has some criticism on the Government, the Astronomer Royal, etc., but reserved in allusion, oblique in sarcasm, and not fiercely uncourteous. The coarseness of the passage I have quoted shows editorial insertion, which is also shown by its blunder. The inserter is waiting for the Almanac of 1851 that he may review Mr. Adams's paper, which is to be contained in it. His own contributor, only two sentences ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... of the fire sat Braxton Wyatt in a Loyalist uniform, a three-cornered hat cocked proudly on his head, and a small sword by his side. He had grown heavier, and Henry saw that the face had increased much in coarseness and cruelty. It had also increased in satisfaction. He was a great man now, as he saw great men, and both face and figure radiated gratification and pride as he lolled before the fire. At the other corner, sitting upon the floor and also in a Loyalist uniform, ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... away a little. His fine nature was shocked by Fred's coarseness and lack of principle; still, this was the boy he had ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May
... displaying honest delf and some bits of choice china, the draping curtains of muslin and cretonne, all spoke of cultivated minds and refined tastes. Staring wants there were, and many discrepancies and incongruities, but no vulgarities nor coarseness nor tawdriness. What they had was fitting. What was fitting but beyond their means these brave home-makers did without, and all things unfitting, however cheap, they scorned. And Shock, though he knew nothing of the genesis and evolution of this home and its furnishings, was sensible of its atmosphere ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... It ceased at length at a small double-leaved gate of iron, to which we tied our horses before entering the churchyard. But instead of a neat burial-place, which the whole approach would have given us to expect, we found a desert. The grass was of extraordinary coarseness, and mingled with quantities of vile-looking weeds. Several of the graves had not even a spot of green upon them, but were mere heaps of yellow earth in huge lumps, mixed with large stones. There was not above a score of graves in the whole place, two or three of which only had gravestones ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... and daughter with unreasonable words. His interests narrowed pitiably, until they did not extend beyond the range of his senses, and the senses themselves dulled, even as did his feelings of fineness. He grew careless in his habits, and required increasing attention to his beard and clothing. Coarseness first peeped in, then became a permanent guest—a coarseness which the wife's presence seemed to inflame, and which could be stilled finally only by the actual caress of his daughter's lips. And with the slow melting of brain-tissue ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... untouched and unimpaired when their friend takes into equal intimacy a third person for whom they themselves entertain aversion or contempt; at the best they see in such conduct an unexpected failure of discernment; very often they detect in it evidence of a startling coarseness of feeling, an insensibility, and a grossness of taste difficult to tolerate in one to whom they have given their affection. Marchmont felt that, if May Gaston wronged him, she was wronging far ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... story was finished. He took a long walk down Broadway, gnawing his lip and holding his head in the air. He used blasphemous language at intervals in a low voice. Some of it was addressed to his fate and some of it to the vulgar mercantile coarseness and obtuseness ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... he had seen only the faces of savage women and still more savage men; for eight years his life had been steeped in bitterness, and all that was tender or romantic in his nature had been cramped, as in iron fetters, by the coarseness and stolidity around him. Now, after all that dreary time, he met one who had the beauty and the refinement of his own race. Was it any wonder that her glance, the touch of her dress or hair, the soft tones of ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... into a tree-shaded lane. Emily tried to believe that this at length was really the country; there were no houses in view, meadows lay on either hand, the leafage was thick. But it was not mere prejudice which saw in every object a struggle with hard conditions, a degeneration into coarseness, a blight. The quality of the earth was probably poor to begin with; the herbage seemed of gross fibre; one would not risk dipping a finger in the stream which trickled by the roadside, it suggested an impure source. And ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... handkerchief in hand, depending low: The better hand, more busy, gives the nose Its bergamot, or aids the indebted eye With opera glass to watch the moving scene, And recognise the slow-retiring fair. Now this is fulsome, and offends me more Than in a Churchman slovenly neglect And rustic coarseness would. A heavenly mind May be indifferent to her house of clay, And slight the hovel as beneath her care. But how a body so fantastic, trim, And quaint in its deportment and attire, Can lodge a heavenly ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... galleries that awe the echo. But so much the greater is my merit if I disdain these excesses of the ease or the pride, since I love the elegant, and have a taste! Others may be simple and honest, from the very coarseness of their habits; if I, with so much refinement and delicacy, am simple and ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... measured him coolly, with an appreciation tempered by his native sense of humour. He perceived at once a certain coarseness of finish which, despite the deep-rooted veneration for an idle ancestry, is found most often in the descendants of a long line of generous livers. A moment later he weighed the keen gray flash of the ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... wide margins of time, a pocket-book; drudgery means limitations, coarseness, crowded hours, chronic worry, old clothes, black hands, headaches. Our real and our ideal are not twins. Never were! I want the books, but the clothes basket wants me. I love nature and figures are my fate. My taste is books and I farm it. My taste ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... engaged, something happened which I simply can't and won't describe. It seemed to me like some monstrous upheaval of madness. But I suppose the truth is painfully simple. There is such a thing as the coarseness of a gentleman. And it is the most ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... too, was there, Commandant of Artillery, a brave officer, but a bad man; Varin, a proud, arrogant libertine, Commissary of Montreal, who outdid Bigot in rapine and Cadet in coarseness; De Breard, Comptroller of the Marine, a worthy associate of Penisault, whose pinched features and cunning leer were in keeping with his important office of chief manager of the Friponne. Perrault, D'Estebe, Morin, and Vergor, all creatures of the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... always singing loudly is greatly to be deprecated, leading as it does to undue strain, to coarseness of the voice, and to utter inability to modulate it into softness and purity of tone. Anyone can shout and bawl, but not every one can sing softly—therefore always practise softly until the voice ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... of the bleached hair, and the flaccid face, and the bizarre wrapper; behind the coarseness and vulgarity and ignorance, Emma McChesney's keen mental eye saw something decent and clean and beautiful. And something pitiable, and ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... had been proud of worshipping beauty without any coarse longing. To her her bronzes had typified something that she valued in herself. Her immense vanity had not been blended with those passions which shake many women, which had devastated Lady Sellingworth. A coarseness in her mind made her love to be physically desired by men, but no coarseness of body made her desire them. And she had supposed that she represented the ultra modern type of woman, the woman who without being cold—she would not acknowledge that ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... then exposed to the winnowing machine, which separates the different kinds of green teas. The winnowing machine is divided into a series of divisions, which receive the different kinds according to their size and weight. 1st. Coarsest Souchoo. This tea, owing to its coarseness, is not marketable. 2nd. Chounchoo. This is a large, round-grained tea. 3rd. Machoo. This is also a round-grained tea, but finer than the former. 4th. Hyson. 5th. Gunpowder Hyson. 6th. Chumat. This kind of tea consists of broken ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... open face, And with fringe-like leaves, without a trace Of coarseness, either in flower or stem, Among all my plants ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... the collection of the man of taste. Verses which, a few years past, were thought worthy the attention of children only, or of the lowest and rudest orders, are now admired for that artless simplicity which once obtained the name of coarseness and vulgarity." Early English poetry, continues the essayist, "has had its day, and the antiquary must not despise us if we cannot peruse it with patience. He who delights in all such reading as is never read, may derive some pleasure from the singularity ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... [hilding] The word hildlng or hinderling—a low wretch; it is applied to Catharine for the coarseness of her behaviour. ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... ferocity and fiendishness beats out of sight Bunyan's picture of that judge who keeps Satan's own seal in Bunyan's Book. Jeffreys was bred for his future work at the bar of the Old Bailey, a bar already proverbial for the licence of its tongue and for the coarseness of its cases. Jeffreys served his apprenticeship for the service that our two last Stuarts had in reserve for him so well, that he soon became, so his beggared biographer describes him, the most consummate bully that ever disgraced an English bench. The boldest ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... had really major and minor tones; we have neither, but a confusion of both. They had both sharps and flats: we have neither, but a mere set of semitones, which serve for both. In their enharmonic scale the fineness of their ear perceived distinctions which are lost on the coarseness of ours. ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... writer in the British Quarterly for January, says of Mrs. John Stuart Mill, applies with equal force to Mrs. Davis. "She seems to have been saved from the coarseness and strenuous tone of the typical strong-minded woman, although probably some of her opinions might shock staid people who are innocent alike of philosophy and the doctrines of the new era." Though in fact this typical strong-minded ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... boys became inseparable, and perhaps the thing that made those days of companionship bright with a singular and golden brightness, was that there was in his friend the same fastidious vein, the same dislike of any coarseness of talk or thought which was strong in Hugh. Looking back on his school life, with all the surprising foulness of the talk of even high-principled boys, it was a deep satisfaction to Hugh to reflect that there ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... quickly, and naturally, perhaps, bred contempt and disillusion. His coarseness offended every susceptibility; he was frankly impossible in such an intimate relation; and after she had given birth to a daughter in Holland, she arranged a separation, for which the groom was, at least, as grateful as herself. The child—the very sight of whom, reminding her as she did of ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... of a "good time" if they could learn how much more charming altogether it is to exchange the delicate courtesies that make up refined social companionship. The difference in social culture is what distinguishes the vulgar wag from the urban wit. The crude humor of the former, often marred by coarseness, is like ore in which the dross greatly out-weighs the pure metal. The brilliant mots of the latter, refined by the processes of culture, are like the gold nuggets separated from ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... chapters in Rabelais and Boccaccio. Nor do the most archaic of the passages which Captain Burton declines to "veil in the decent obscurity of a learned language" leave much room for the admirers of Shakespeare, or Greene, or Nash, or Wycherley, or Swift, or Sterne to cry shame. Their coarseness was a reflection of the times. The indelicacy was not offensive to those who heard it. On the other hand, apart from the language, the general tone of "The Nights" is exceptionally high and pure. The devotional fervour, as Captain Burton justly claims, often rises to the boiling-point of fanaticism ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... elaborate white deshabille, (it was really a fine picture, and, like the much decried and seldom read efforts of the poetess, better at the second look than at the first), had not reminded me, by the expression of the mouth, which is large, full, and sensual, of the peculiar coarseness of Madame de Stael's portrait by Gerard. When I saw it two years ago, at Coppet, in bright sunshine, I could not help being impressed by those red, vinous lips and the wide, aspiring nostrils. ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... more surprised, the bailiff took the notes hesitatingly, examined them very suspiciously, turning them over and over, and finally pocketed them. But as his alarm and surprise began to subside, so did his natural coarseness return, and eying Rudolph from head to foot with an impertinent stare, he exclaimed, "Your notes are good; but how came the likes of you with so large a sum? I hope, at least, it ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... "If I could have my choice of the pictures and statues in the Tribune, I would take this picture, and that one yonder" (it was a good enough Enthronement of the Virgin by Andrea del Sarto) "and the Dancing Faun, and let the rest go." A delightful man; I love that wholesome coarseness of mind and heart, which no education nor opportunity can polish out of the genuine Englishman; a coarseness without vulgarity. When a Yankee is coarse, he is pretty sure to ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... estate of Killerby in Yorkshire, where he turned his attention to Shorthorns about 1790, and by 1814 he was as well known as the Collings. He improved the Shorthorns by reducing the bone, especially the length and coarseness of the legs, the too prominent hips, and the heavy shoulder bones. In 1819 he removed to Warlaby, and died there in 1835, having given up the Killerby estate to his son John, who with his brother Richard ably sustained their father's reputation. ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... divide them all day, and whose sensibility is blunted by the coarseness of their education, are in no danger of being weary of each other; and, unless naturally vicious, you will see them generally happy in marriage; whereas even the virtuous, in more affluent situations, are not secure from this unhappy cessation ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... her in silence for a moment—and she at him. His aspect seemed to change under her eyes. The handsome points of the face came out; its coarseness and loutishness receded. And his manner became suddenly quiet and manly—though full ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... confess I was at my wit's end. Indeed, I had a mind to go alone. The gentlemen of my acquaintance—either they could not be trusted with an affair of such value, or they had too much of our English coarseness to be at ease with it. Faith, when I came to see my poor, dear Harry, little I thought that in his neighbourhood I should find the very man for my embassy." The two gentlemen laughed together over the incompatibility ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... West Philadelphia, for instance, are given up to the Carolina poplar. Its clear, green, shining leaves, of good size, coming early in spring; its easily guided habit, either upright or spreading; its very rapid growth, all commend it. But its coarseness and lack of real strength, and its continual invitation to the tree-butcher and the electric lineman, indicate the undesirability of giving it more than a temporary position, to shade while better ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... good thing must be scored down to the credit of the country girls of the day. They have done much to educate the men. They have shamed them out of the old rough, boorish ways; compelled them to abandon the former coarseness, to become more gentlemanly in manner. By their interest in the greater world of society, literature, art, and music (more musical publications probably are now sold for the country in a month than used to be in a year), they have made the somewhat narrow-sighted farmer glance ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... Grecian. Calmer thoughts, however, drove this boyish design out of my mind; for I considered that the bishop was in the right to counsel an old servant; that he could not have designed that his advice should be reported to me; and that the same coarseness of mind which had led Mrs. Betty to repeat the advice at all, might have coloured it in a way more agreeable to her own style of thinking than to the actual expressions of the ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... me that the thoughts that stirred in my mind were sinister and base, that the queer suspicions, the coarseness and coarse jealousies of my old world were over and done for these more finely living souls. "You made," I said, trying to be liberal ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... us in the course of years has not known?—such cases in our school experience. A child has come from a refined and loving home, but only to meet with roughness or coarseness; and instead of retaining those gifts and qualities of childhood, which are the godlike qualities of life and meant to be permanent, he has been led to grow up utterly unchildlike, depraved, debased, hardened; and there is no sadder sight to see than a growth of this kind. And if you ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... intellect to a wonderful degree. They never forget a place they have once seen. If the steppe plants grow closer or thinner, if the ground shows the slightest inequality, if there is grey or black gravel of different coarseness—all these details serve as marks of recognition. When we rest a minute halfway between two post-houses to let the horses breathe, the Kirghiz driver turns round and says, "Yonder rides a Kirghiz on a dappled mare." Yet on directing my field-glass towards the indicated spot, ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... however, Mrs. Guthrie Brimston's influence was perceptibly upon the wane. Even Colonel Colquhoun wearied of her—to Evadne's great regret. For Mrs. Guthrie Brimston's vulgarity and coarseness of mind were always balanced by her undoubted propriety of conduct, and her faults were altogether preferable to the exceeding polish and refinement which covered the absolutely corrupt life of a new acquaintance Colonel Colquhoun had made at this time, a Mrs. Drinkworthy, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... rank and position should condescend to marry a girl of low degree, however virtuous or excellent she might be. These mesalliances can never answer. Too soon the one of more refined habits and ideas discovers a degree of coarseness and vulgarity in the other, which must ultimately cause separation. No; my only notion of a happy union is, that where people are of the same rank and education, and all ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... considering these antecedents, that much of arrogance, coarseness, and vulgarity should be met with? Is it not rather surprising, that a traveller should meet with so little to annoy—so few obvious departures from the ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... proceeded from the mouths of pedlars and rustics, were of the most edifying description; mostly on subjects moral or metaphysical, and couched in the most gentlemanly and unexceptionable language, without the slightest mixture of vulgarity, coarseness, or pie-bald grammar. Such appeared to me to be the contents of the book; but before I could form a very clear idea of them, I found myself nodding, and a surprising desire to sleep coming over me. Rousing myself, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... uniformity of certain rules, was undoubtedly wholly unknown to the age of Shakespeare, as in a great measure it still is at the present day in England. It possessed, on the other hand, a fulness of healthy vigor, which showed itself always with boldness, and sometimes also with coarseness. The spirit of chivalry was not yet wholly extinct, and a queen, who was far more jealous in exacting homage to her sex than to her throne, and who, with her determination, wisdom, and magnanimity, was in fact well qualified to inspire the minds of her subjects with an ardent enthusiasm, inflamed ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... through the ages, we must select, for we cannot crowd the child with all the folk-stuff that folk-lore scientists are striving to preserve for scientific purposes. Moreover, naturally much of it contains the crudities, the coarseness, and the cruelties of primitive civilization; and it is not necessary that the child be burdened with this natural history of a past society. We must select from the past. In this selection of what shall be presented to the child ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... the World who knows most of his species. And where, alas! may this knowledge, so painful and so humiliating, be better acquired than in a colony? There we have the human heart laid open before us without veil or disguise: there we see it in all its coarseness, its ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... which account the dingle was wet and dank from the dews of the night. I kindled my fire, and, after sitting by it for some time to warm my frame, I took some of the coarse food which I have already mentioned; notwithstanding my late struggle and the coarseness of the fare, I ate with appetite. My provisions had by this time been very much diminished, and I saw that it would be speedily necessary, in the event of my continuing to reside in the dingle, to lay in ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... plays of Livius Andronicus, which were copied from the Grecian comedies. It may possibly be so; but Dacier knows no more of it than I do. And it seems to me the more probable opinion that he rather imitated the fine railleries of the Greeks, which he saw in the pieces of Andronicus, than the coarseness of his own countrymen in their clownish extemporary ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... They are made up of three partitions. The outer wall, 3 feet 6 inches thick, is, no doubt, the work of Roger. The middle wall, 4 feet 8 inches thick, is faced with herring-bone work, and this, and the coarseness of its workmanship, prove it to be of great antiquity. It is almost undoubtedly Saxon, and has been supposed, though on slender evidence, to be part of the original church begun by Edwin in the seventh century. A bit of this wall is now bare, and ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... articles in favor of the dead, they answered, 'that it was not only to evidence their love for their departed relatives, but that they might avoid the sight of objects which, having been used by them, would continually renew their grief.' The same delicacy of feeling, so inconsistent with the coarseness of the Red Man's nature, was manifested in their custom of never uttering the names of the dead; and if these names were borne by any of the other members of the family, they laid them aside during the whole of their mourning. And it was esteemed the greatest insult that could be offered to say ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... Instead, you're much coarser—except about piffling, piddling, paltry non-essentials. You strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. I shouldn't be a bit surprised if Margaret had penetrated the fact that your coarseness is in-bred while mine is near surface. Women have a surprising way of getting at the bottom of things. I'm a good deal like a ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... mundane sensibility, revealed perhaps in a chance phrase or diffidence, or more often in some curiously fine touch to canvas of his rare, audacious brush. The incongruities of the man, his malice, his coarseness, his reckless generosity, gave Rainham much food for thought. And, indeed, that parched empty August seemed full of problematical issues; and he had, on matters of more import than the enigmatic mind of a new friend, to be content at last ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... then at last came and sank down in a very low position at Wych Hazel's feet on the carpet. She was a pretty girl; might have been extremely pretty, if her very pronounced style of manners had not drawn lines of boldness, almost of coarseness, where the lip should have been soft and the eyebrow modest. The whole expression was dissatisfied and jaded to-day, over and above those lines, which even low spirits ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... interspersing the gusts of jealousy in the matter of the two Elaines which play so great a part in the story. And it is curious that, coarse as both the manners and the speech of the Middle Ages are supposed to have been, the majority of these romances are curiously free from coarseness. The ideas might shock Ascham's prudery, but the expression is, with the rarest exceptions, scrupulously adapted to polite society. There are one or two coarse passages in the Merlin and the older Saint Graal, and I ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... deficiencies, and even on some of his favorite pursuits, which she looked upon as contributing to strengthen his shyness with ladies. She was not unacquainted with English literature, in which the rusticity and coarseness of the fox-hunting squires formed a piquant subject for the mirth of dramatists and novelists; and if Squire Western had been the type of sportsmen in all countries, she could not have inveighed more vigorously ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... such coarseness! such vulgarity! such indelicacy!" cried Mrs. Ramshorn, while the parson was still occupied with the sherry. "Not content with talking about himself in the pulpit, he must even talk about his wife! What's he or his wife in the house of God? When his gown is on, a clergyman is neither ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... most luxurious house, have their regions of unsightliness; but the fine chemistry of Nature is constantly clearing away all its impurities before our eyes, and yet so delicately that we never suspect the process. The most exquisite work of literary art exhibits a certain crudeness and coarseness, when we turn to it from Nature,—as the smallest cambric needle appears rough and jagged, when compared through the magnifier with the tapering ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... always speak of the populace; for it is entirely true that, in great states, the lower orders are low by nature as well as by task, being precisely that part of the commonwealth which has been thrust down for its coarseness or unworthiness (by coarseness I mean especially insensibility and irreverence—the "profane" of Horace); and when this ceases to be so, and the corruption and profanity are in the higher instead of the lower orders, there arises, first, helpless confusion, then, if the lower classes ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... often ranked as inferior only to Shakespeare. As an exponent of the sentiments and atmosphere of his own time, we find in him what is found only in a few of the world's greatest writers. That he has not been more widely read in modern times, is attributed chiefly to the extraordinary coarseness of language which he constantly introduces into his pages. This coarseness is, in fact, so pervasive that expurgation is made extremely difficult to any one who would preserve some fair ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... their taste you must lay hold of this suspicious fugitive. In vain will you combat their maxims, in vain will you condemn their actions; but you can try your moulding hand on their leisure. Drive away caprice, frivolity, and coarseness, from their pleasures, and you will banish them imperceptibly from their acts, and at length from their feelings. Everywhere that you meet them, surround them with great, noble, and ingenious forms; multiply around them the symbols of perfection, till appearance ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... the harsh visits he used to make in her own palace, to reprove her there, have been much commented upon. Such cruelty, such coarseness, fills us with indignation. On reading the actual narrative of the business, what Knox said, and what Knox meant, I must say one's tragic feeling is rather disappointed. They are not so coarse, these speeches, they seem to me about as fine as the circumstances would permit! ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... her power for her country, there is nothing masculine, or as the phrase goes, "strong-minded" in her demeanor. She is a descendant of Oliver Cromwell, and has much of his energy and power of endurance, but none of his coarseness, being remarkably unselfish, and lady-like in her manners. During the earlier years of the war, she spent much of her time in visiting the towns of the territory assigned to the society, and promoting the formation of local Soldiers' Aid Societies, and it was due to her efforts that there ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... his pet, his dear love, his dear little Burney, his little character-monger. At one time, he broke forth in praise of the good taste of her caps. At another time, he insisted on teaching her Latin. That, with all his coarseness and irritability, he was a man of sterling benevolence, has long been acknowledged. But how gentle and endearing his deportment could be, was not known till the Recollections of Madame D'Arblay ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... most hateful and trying quart d'heure I ever passed in my life. I fancy Raoul Rigault had never been in the society of a lady (perhaps he had never seen one), and his innate coarseness seemed to make him gloat over the present situation, and as a true republican, whose motto is Egalite, Fraternite, Liberte, he flattered himself he was on an equality with me, therefore he could take any amount of liberty. He ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... aspect of things inside the house told of such habitual coarseness in their way of living as seemed to explain, while it formed the fitting counterpart of, the forbidding gloominess of the outside. My astonishment by degrees changed into disgust, and my disgust into uneasiness. I cannot detail the whole chain of ideas ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of coarseness in papa; or perhaps I should say—for the impression it leaves is primarily negative, as of something manque—an incompleteness in the sensitive equipment. As yet it can hardly be said to embarrass me; though I foresee a time when I ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the dancing academy just entering on the arm of her devoted father. Three months have passed since we first met her. She is much changed, yet one can scarcely see in what the change consists. The face is the same, yet not the same. There is just the shadow of coarseness in it, a little less of frank innocence and true refinement, and a trace, not exactly of ill-health, but a want of freshness. This last is, however, well concealed by the use of cosmetics, and she is still a very beautiful ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner
... to his vanity in the spectacle of her humiliation; at all events he suffered some time to pass before he spoke to her. When he did, it was with a great deal of respect; for Blassemare, notwithstanding his coarseness, had a ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... suffering but who are not at all affected by moral suffering. These laugh at a self-love touched to the quick, at a wounded pride, at the tortured self-consciousness of one abashed or humiliated. These are, in their eyes, harmless, and slight pricks which they themselves, by a coarseness of nature, or a fine moral health, would endure perhaps with equanimity, which at any rate they do not feel in behalf of others, with whom they ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... Personally, she had come to like and approve Mr. Deyncourt the most, and to have a sense that there was satisfaction in that to which he could lead her, while the better taste that had grown in her was sometimes offended, almost insulted, by Tom Brady's tendency to coarseness, and to treating her not as a lady, but as the Westhaven belle he had honoured with his attentions two years before. Yet she had an old kindness for him as her first love. And, moreover, he could give her eventually a title and very considerable ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... most charm, and least pain, to the poet or the artist when men are hidden away under their roofs. Then they do not break its calm with either their mirth or their brutality; then the vile and revolting coarseness of their works, that blot it with so much deformity, is softened and obscured in the purple breaths of shadow, and the dim ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... involving the vexed question, was heard by the court, and the validity of the disputed laws was sustained by its judgment. The signal spectacle of the court, which had judged over Congress and the Secretary, now judging over itself, gave rise to much satire on one side and the other, and to some coarseness of contumely as to the motives and the means of these eventful mutations in matters, where stability and uniformity are, confessedly, of the highest value to the public interests, and to the ...
— Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase - Delivered by William M. Evarts before the Alumni of - Dartmouth College, at Hanover • William M. Evarts
... companions of the successful gold-diggers appeared in no hurry to resume the dress or obligations of their sex. Many were clothed as the men were, in flannel shirt and boots; rode their mules in unfeminine fashion, but with much ease and courage; and in their conversation successfully rivalled the coarseness of their lords. I think, on the whole, that those French lady writers who desire to enjoy the privileges of man, with the irresponsibility of the other sex, would have been delighted with the disciples who were carrying ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... amounting in some places to coarseness, and a deeply religious tone, are to many modern readers the most curious features of the book. A just estimate of it could not be formed if these two facts were overlooked. A century ago men and women were much more straightforward in their speech than we are to-day. They were not squeamish. ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... she did not, might tell both for and against her. Granting that she lacked true dignity, native refinement, might it not have been expected that artfulness would supply their place? Artful fencing would have stamped her of coarse nature. But coarseness she had never betrayed; he had never judged her worse than intellectually shallow. Her self-surrender might, then, indicate a trait worthy of admiration. Her subsequent behaviour undeniably pleaded for respect. She acquainted him with ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... purpose. But, on a survey of the poetical literature of the two countries, it was discovered that, of really excellent humorous poetry, of the kinds universally interesting, untainted by obscenity, not marred by coarseness of language, nor obscured by remote allusion, the quantity in existence is not great. It is thought that this volume contains a very large proportion of the best ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... language indicates the difference; all are clad in male attire; and oaths that men might shudder at, issue from lips born to breathe words of sweetness. Yet these are to be—some are—the mothers of England! But can we wonder at the hideous coarseness of their language when we remember the savage rudeness of their lives? Naked to the waist, an iron chain fastened to a belt of leather runs between their legs clad in canvas trousers, while on hands and feet an English girl, for twelve, sometimes for sixteen hours a-day, hauls and hurries tubs ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... truth and as uncompromising as justice. I am in earnest,—I will not equivocate,—I will not excuse,—I will not retreat a single inch,—AND I WILL BE HEARD. It is pretended that I am retarding the cause of emancipation by the coarseness of my invective and the precipitancy of my measures. The charge is not true. On this question, my influence, humble as it is, is felt at this moment to a considerable extent, and shall be felt in coming years, not perniciously, but beneficially; not as a curse, but as a blessing; and posterity will ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... by no embarrassment that labor, assiduity, and good sense could surmount." His independence was as great as his energy, and both smacked of the Saxon blood in his veins. The manner of the sculptor was rough and unceremonious, but he exhibited as little coarseness in his demeanor as in the massive figures of his chisel, which might offend some by their heaviness, but which gratified all by their undoubted grandeur and dignity. The quiet yet splendid generosity ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... pretty, delicate creatures who remind one of a very elaborate rose-bud. There was an appearance of ultra-refinement about her, a look of that refinement which is in itself a weakness, a poverty of blood, so to speak, the opposite and more pleasing but equally unhealthy extreme of coarseness. She looked very pretty as, having left Ruth, she stood by Charles, passing her little pink hand over the lowest carvings, dim and worn with the heat of many generations of fires, and listened with rapt attention to his answers ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... sentences were interrupted by long pauses, as if to allow time for them to penetrate the ear, and to be appreciated by the mind of the listener; he relieved them, every now and then, by graceful pleasantry, never degenerating into coarseness, as though he purposely upheld the conversation on these light and sportive wings, to prevent its being borne down by the weight ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... he otherwise stated it, "cradled in the lap of luxury." His father was one of those rich Illinois farmers who are none the less coarse for all their money and farms. Owing to reverses of fortune, Dave had inherited none of the wealth, but all of the coarseness of grain. So he walked into Squire Plausaby's with his usual assurance, on the second evening ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... gave them sufficient foothold and launched arrows and spears at the defenders above them. During the entire battle both sides hurled taunts and insults at one another—the human beings naturally excelling the brutes in the coarseness and vileness of ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... only five hundred pounds." A life such as she then led surely affected her appearance. In 1783, Walpole wrote: "The Duchess of Devonshire, the empress of fashion, is no beauty at all. She was a very fine woman, with all the freshness of youth and health, but verges fast to a coarseness." ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... would have recruited a noble brain. But without any evil intention, sometimes with the very kindest intention, there are those who worry and torment you. It is through want of perception, —want of tact,—coarseness of nature,—utter lack of power to understand you. Were you ever sitting in a considerable company, a good deal saddened by something you did not choose to tell to any one, and probably looking dull and dispirited enough,—and did ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... that is used to characterize the peculiarities that distinguish a writer or a composition. Correctness and clearness properly belong to the domain of diction; simplicity, conciseness, gravity, elegance, diffuseness, floridity, force, feebleness, coarseness, etc., belong ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... it is mere hardihood and coarseness of make. A plant that can live anywhere, will often live where it is not wanted. But the delicate and tender ones {110} keep at home. You have no trouble in 'keeping down' the spring gentian. It rejoices in its own Alpine ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... not only that his improved Mary Ann was again sinking to earth, unable to soar in the romantic aether where he would fain have seen her volant; it was not only that the coarseness of her nature had power to drag her down, it was the coarseness of her red, chapped hands that was thrust once again and ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... April 1566, a deputation of 400 gentlemen, with Lewis of Nassau, a brother of the prince of Orange, at their head, presented a petition to Margaret of Austria, the Governor of the Netherlands. From the coarseness of their dress, they acquired the name of gueux or beggars, and retained it throughout the whole of the ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler |
