"Saturnine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and saturnine character, his outbursts of terrible rage; his exquisite moments of tenderness; his sledge-hammer blows; his diabolical irony; form a dramatic and tragic spectacle which no ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... Jack was brought forward to display his accomplishments, which he did in the most hang-dog fashion. The cleverness and good-looks and goodness of the girls were expatiated upon, but Margret gave no sign of interest. Once Fanny caught her looking at her with a queer saturnine glance, that made her feel all at once hot and uncomfortable, though she had felt pretty secure of her smartness before that. Margret's reception of Mrs. Jack's overtures did not satisfy that enterprising lady. When she had departed Mrs. Jack ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... the old man, bitterly; "I heard. I don't wonder at a lad of spirit resenting my harsh, saturnine ways. What a life for a lad like you! Well, you've made up your mind, and I'll be just to you, my lad. You shall be started well. When would you like ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... suddenly among the cottonwoods that belted with a scattering grove the garden and the spring. The horseman was Lanpher, manager of the 88 ranch. He was followed by another rider, a lean, swarthy individual with a smooth-shaven, saturnine face. Racey knew the latter by sight and reputation. The man was one Skeel and rejoiced in the nick-name of "Alicran." The furtive scorpion whose sting is death is not indigenous to the territory, but Mr. ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... broken him very much; he was seventy, but looked more. He had a servant, a Luganese, named Dominique, devoted to him. Nicholas Treffry had found him overworked in an hotel, and had engaged him with the caution: "Look—here, Dominique! I swear!" To which Dominique, dark of feature, saturnine and ironical, had only ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... irresistible fun, and known the overwhelming fullness of Lord Macaulay. It is not unreasonable even in that later generation which can still recall the frank but high-bred gaiety of the great Lord Derby, the rollicking good-humour and animal spirits of Bishop Wilberforce, the saturnine epigrams of Lord Beaconsfield, the versatility and choice diction of Lord Houghton, the many-sided yet concentrated malice which supplied the stock in trade of Abraham Hayward. More recent losses have been heavier still. Just ten years ago[15] died Mr. Matthew Arnold, who combined in singular ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... within him until he must have become a perfect pest to himself and all the friends round about him. He uttered jokes so deep that his simple mother did not know their meaning, but sate bewildered at his sarcasms, and powerless what to think of his moody, saturnine humour. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... And a saturnine smile, accompanied by the frowning bend of his white fuzzy eyebrows over his flashing black eyes, had produced such a withering, blistering effect on the soul of the unfortunate Englishman, whose practical ideas of utility ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... be divided in their opinions concerning this action; some may applaud it perhaps as an act of extraordinary humanity, while those of a more saturnine temper will consider it as a want of regard to that justice which every man owes his country. Partridge certainly saw it in that light; for he testified much dissatisfaction on the occasion, quoted an old proverb, and said, he should not wonder if the rogue ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... astrology, or count that the planet under which a man is born will affect his temperament, make him for life of a disposition grave or gay, lively or severe. Yet our language affirms as much; for we speak of men as 'jovial' or 'saturnine,' or 'mercurial'—'jovial,' as being born under the planet Jupiter or Jove, which was the joyfullest star, and of happiest augury of all: [Footnote: 'Jovial' in Shakespeare's time (see Cymbeline, act 5, sc. 4) had not forgotten its connexion with Jove.] a gloomy severe ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... is all this! There is no genuine feeling in it: he attires himself in tawdry sentiment as in a flowered waistcoat. What a difference between him, at this period, and his contemporary Benjamin Disraeli, who indeed committed similar inanities, but with a saturnine sense of humor cropping out at every turn which altered the whole complexion of the performance. We laugh at the one, but ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... fireplace, and flagged hearth, and wall cupboards, and the only furniture, the usual red backed splinter chairs and wooden table. A woman standing before the fire with a broom in her hand, answered Fleda's inclination with a saturnine nod of the head, and, fetching one of the red-backs from the wall, bade her ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... But he found a saturnine pleasure in being old Anthony's Nemesis. He meant to be that. He steadily widened the breach between Lily and her family, and he watched the progress of her affair with Louis Akers with relish. He had not sought this particular form of revenge, but Fate had ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and genial temperament. At the same time he was, like most cultured persons—and especially musicians,—highly strung and excitable. But at a certain point in his career his very nature seemed to change; he became reserved, secretive, and saturnine. On this moral metamorphosis followed an equally startling physical change. His robust health began to fail him, and although there was no definite malady which doctors could combat, he went gradually from bad to worse until the ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... temples, and sacrifices: and on the contrary, evil spirits are pleased and allured and called up by suffumigations of Henbane, &c. stinking smells, &c. which the witches do use in their conjuration. Toads (saturnine animals) are killed by putting of salt upon them; I have seen the experiment. Magical writers say, that cedar-wood drives away evil spirits; it was, and is ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... A saturnine crowd, soon to be forgotten, we silently pass away from the world and leave no trace behind, without having handed down to the ages to come a single work of genius, or even a ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... chorus. Songs of sentiment prevailed, but the traditions of a soldier's experience of the sex have informed his ballads with strange touches of irony, that help him to his (so to say) philosophy, which is recklessness. The Tyroler's 'Katchen' here, was a saturnine Giulia, who gave him no response, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a quality in the voice which I cannot describe. Not only an accent of command, but a something malicious, a something saturnine. It was a little guttural, though whether it was a man speaking I could not have positively said; but I had no doubt it was a foreigner. It was the most disagreeable voice I had ever heard, and ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... could kill Cesare without the slightest shadow of a question. There was, she recognized, something essentially feminine in the saturnine bullfighter; his pride had been severely assaulted; and therefore he would be—in his own, less subtle manner—as dangerous as Gheta. Cesare's self-esteem, too, had been wounded in its most vulnerable place—he had been insulted before her. But, even if the latter refused to proceed, ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the sake of your excellency's coat buttons," said politely the saturnine Gonzales. "We found those of the dead mariner concealed on her person. But your excellency may rest assured that everything that is fitting has been done on ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... in grey and silver, did not choose to notice her daughter's governess; she was deep in talk with her brother-in-law; but men could not help looking at Olive. Mr Marvel stood up and bowed as she passed, and the silent, saturnine Marchese stared. His black eyes were intent upon her as she came to the piano where Mamie was restlessly turning over the music, and no one watching him could fail to see that he was making comparisons that were probably to the disadvantage of ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... childhood were Dawson Turner and Hudson Gurney, who in this respect resembled each other, that they were both bankers and both antiquarians more or less distinguished. Dawson Turner was a man of middle height and of saturnine aspect, who had the reputation of being a hard taskmaster to the ladies of his family, who were quite as intelligent and devoted to literature as himself. He published a 'Tour in Normandy'—at that time scarcely anyone travelled ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... naturally lively and garrulous, the design he entertained of taking away the life of his charge did not prevent his making himself agreeable to her in the meantime. With his well-seared conscience, he neither felt nervous nor saturnine at the prospect of what was before him—why should he indeed?—for the only part of the prospect he fixed his eye upon was the gain; the little operation by means of which it was to be acquired, he did not think very seriously ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... was really not a bad fellow in the main, felt kindly towards him, and accepted the cigarette with effusion. The vicar relapsed into silence, making no attempt to complete his unfinished sentence; then he stole a glance at the saturnine face of the stranger, and from that moment became an almost liberal-minded theologian; He had had an object-lesson that was to last him all his life, and he never ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... the raking of seaports, with little on board in the way of religion, save the traditions of the Church and the materials for exhibiting the drama of the Mass! This is the contingent which civilization detaches for the settlement of another world. It effaces a smiling barbarism by a saturnine and gloomy one, as when a great forest slides from some height over a wild gay meadow. These capable, cruel men went sailing among the Bahamas, soothed by the novelty and delight of finding land, and tried to behave ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... brother cowpunchers monstrously. They, knowing him to be a singular man, forebore ever to press him, and awaited his own humor, lest he should weary of the lyric; and when after a day of silence apparently saturnine, he would lift his gentle ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... biscuits were light and flaky, the honey was delightsome, and the milk and butter (procured specially) were fresh. They shouted in laughter as Flaxen insisted on their eating potatoes with a fork, and opposed the use of the knife in scooping up the honey from their plates! Even the saturnine Bert forgot his gloom and laughed too, as Ans laboriously dipped his honey with a fork, and, finally growing desperate, split a biscuit in half, and in the good old boyish way ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... went, leaving behind her no tangible token, except a tiny pearl-colored glove, which Guy twisted rather pensively between his fingers as he stood on the hall steps, and watched the carriage disappear down the avenue. Mr. Bruce exulted after his saturnine fashion, and Isabel Raymond trembled; the one had lost a strong, unscrupulous ally, the other ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... through surprise at the event itself, and partly from terror at the hideous grimaces which attended this unusual cachinnation. The only effect which the discovery of such impositions produced upon this saturnine personage was, to extort an ejaculation of 'Prodigious!' or 'Very facetious!' pronounced syllabically, but without moving a muscle of his ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of the order in New France, a grave, saturnine man, and several other fathers in close black cassocks and square caps, stood behind the preacher, watching with keen eyes the faces of the auditory as if to discover who were for and who were against the sentiments and ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... "Yes, Vaucheray, a saturnine spirit, full of bitterness and envy, an ambitious, unscrupulous, gloomy, crafty man, who had acquired a great empire over my son. Gilbert made the mistake of confiding in him and asking his advice. That was the ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... younger than Mr Foster, but rather more pale and saturnine in his aspect, here took up the thread of the discourse, observing, that the proposition just advanced seemed to him perfectly contrary to the true state of the case: "for," said he, "these improvements, as you call them, appear to me only so many links in the great chain of corruption, which ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... some little time in watching them; and certainly no two individuals could have afforded a greater contrast. Gillooly went on eating, laughing, and drinking, diverting himself by quizzing his saturnine companion, who replied only occasionally, ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... off from their fellow beings in some peculiar and extraordinary way. They are isolated and alone, and they appear to realise their lonely position keenly. They are gloomy, morbid, and Saturnine in character. They seldom marry, and when they do it is ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... scored, shaped a good deal like an egg, and nearly its size. One pound and a tiny fraction that great nugget balanced—when we got around to weighing it. And then to crown the glorious day which the gods were brimming for us, came Don Gaspar and Vasquez, trailed by that long and saturnine individual, Missouri Jones. The Spaniards were outwardly calm, but their eyes snapped. As soon as they saw ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... well and bade her think no more about the man, I very soon had reason to be of her opinion. Two or three days later, as I was sawing planks in the yard, to make a trellis, that saturnine person came in, resplendently dressed, and filled the wholesome place with the reek of his essences. He saluted me with extravagant politeness, telling me that he had words for my private ear which he was sure would interest ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... Welland lolled and lazed and listened to Miss Van Arsdale's music, or read, or took little walks between showers. No further mention was made by her hostess of the circumstances of the visit. She was a reticent woman; almost saturnine, Io decided, though her perfect and effortless courtesy preserved her from being antipathetic to any one beneath her own roof. How much her silence as to the unusual situation was inspired by consideration for her guest, how much due to natural ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... raillery, I will force my genius to obey it, though with more reputation I could write in verse. I know I am not so fitted by nature to write comedy: I want that gaiety of humour which is required to it. My conversation is slow and dull; my humour saturnine and reserved: In short, I am none of those who endeavour to break jests in company, or make repartees. So that those, who decry my comedies, do me no injury, except it be in point of profit: reputation in them is the last thing to which I shall pretend. I beg pardon for entertaining ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... fish—had the charge of the garden and poultry-yard, and was inspector-general of the stables and kennels; he carved at dinner—decanted the wine—mixed the punch, and manufactured puns and jokes to amuse his saturnine brother. When the dessert was removed he read the newspapers to the old Squire, until he dosed in his easy chair; and when the sleepy fit was over, he played with him at cribbage or back-gammon, until the ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... of steel. This book, whether accidentally or not, was so turned outwardly from the person as to discover the words "Rituel Catholique" in white letters upon the back. His entire physiognomy was interestingly saturnine—even cadaverously pale. The forehead was lofty, and deeply furrowed with the ridges of contemplation. The corners of the mouth were drawn down into an expression of the most submissive humility. There was also a clasping of the hands, as he ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... by the Skipper, and the others watched him fascinated as he glared at his victim, and even the iron composure of the saturnine mate seemed to be moved partially aside. The Mexican began to whimper and moan as his eyes shifted to avoid the terrible ones of the Captain. He was not suffering any special violence, but a strange tremor filled the soul of the Mexican, in the grip ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... in effigy by his devoted tenants and retainers, and the thought that the prosaic dollars of his countrymen would be substituted for the potent presence of the heir, tickled, it is to be feared, the saturnine humor of the consul. He had taken an invincible dislike to the callow representative of the McHulish, who he felt had in some extraordinary way imposed upon Custer's credulity. But then he had apparently imposed ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... without in the least understanding how Carlos, with his fine grain, his high soul—I gave him credit for a high soul—could put up with the squalid ferocity with which I credited Castro. It seemed to hang in the air round the grotesque ragged-ness of the saturnine brown man. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... Arezzo, With the grave-clothes garb and swaddling barret, (Why purse up mouth and beak in a pet so, You bald, saturnine, poll-clawed parrot?) No poor glimmering Crucifixion, Where in the foreground kneels the donor? If such remain, as is my conviction, The hoarding does you but ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... off. Of all Latin authors none has so much power over the reader as Tacitus. If by eloquence is meant the ability to persuade, then he is the most eloquent historian that ever existed. To doubt his judgment is almost to be false to the conscience of history. Nevertheless, his saturnine portraits have been severely criticised both by English and French historians, and the arguments for the defence put forward with enthusiasm as well as force. The result is, that Tacitus's verdict has been shaken, but not reversed. The surpassing vividness of such characters as his Tiberius and ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... such strange plants grow in them; and who can guess the meaning of the tales they tell, in that never-ceasing, purling tongue of theirs? . . . And Signor Ranocchio? What do you suppose he is thinking of, as he floats there, so still, so saturnine, so indifferent to us? He is plainly in a deep, deep reverie. How wise he looks—a grey, wise old water-hermit, with his head full of strange, unimaginable water-secrets, and strange, ancient water-memories. Perhaps he is—what was his name?—the god of ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... first pillar, which was of sapphire, stood the image of Saturn in elutian (Motteux reads 'Eliacim.') lead, with his scythe in his hand, and at his feet a crane of gold, very artfully enamelled, according to the native hue of the saturnine bird. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... her saturnine, brooding way the warmth of April sunshine and the stirring greenery of awakening life now beginning to soften the brown austerity of the dead winter earth. Beside her kitchen wall the pink cones of rhubarb were showing, and the fat buds of the lilacs, which clustered coppicelike ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... reference to a way our saturnine post had of pretending that he brought no letters and passing the door. Then he turned back. "Mistress McQumpha," ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... bright face had become sombre and thoughtful. It looked strangely dark and saturnine ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... among his most important books. In his letter to Wolfgang Capito, July 9, 1537, he writes: "I am quite cold and indifferent about arranging my books, for, incited by a Saturnine hunger, I would much rather have them all devoured, eo quod Saturnina fame percitus magis cuperem eos omnes devoratos. For none do I acknowledge as really my books, except perhaps De Servo Arbitrio and the Catechism." ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... 2 Saturnine B——n, the author of 'the stage,' a Poem, on hearing the day after her marriage with the banker, a conversation relative to her age, said he was sure the party were all in error, as there could be no doubt the lady was on the previous ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... The saturnine Anthony Wood is amusingly illustrated in two passages from his notice of Earle. "John Earle received his first being in this vain and transitory world within the city of York.... His elegy on Beaumont was printed at the end of the quarto ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... of becoming gay, waxed ever more portentous and sublime. When he was almost sober, say of a Friday afternoon, he was grave, merely creating the impression that some long-past tragedy had clouded his life. When he was by way of being what one may denominate half-interested, his face assumed the saturnine expression of an ancient misanthrope, but when at last he reached the full flower of his magnificent endeavors, the silent severity of his countenance became so forbidding and sinister as to freeze the smile from the lips of a happy child. By his face you might know ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... by a tall, thin, gloomy-looking personage, dressed in dark clothing, and somewhat heavily armed, for a period of internal peace. His complexion was saturnine, his features sharp and angular, his eyes keen and sunk deep under the overhanging brows; and across one cheek, not far below the eye, was a deep gash, which drew down the inner corners of the eyelid, and gave a still more sinister expression to ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... snuff, sneeze, make love, mimic a tragedian, cheat his master, pick a pocket, beat a watchman, or nurse a child, it is all performed in so admirably humorous and extravagantly natural a manner, that spectators of the most saturnine disposition ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... favour at Court, notwithstanding his father's misconduct, but he suddenly compromised himself in a very imprudent way. Closely intimate with that virtuous maid-of-honour, Marie de Hautefort, whom the saturnine Louis XIII. loved as passionately as his peculiar temperament permitted, and also with Mademoiselle de Chemerault, as lovely as she was witty, he was by them hurried into a blind devotion to the cause of their unhappy mistress and queen, ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... tall figure standing in front of me and saw that he was watching the retreating figure of his henchman with a saturnine smile on his face. I thought swiftly. If I could yell a warning to Lucky, he could bolt the door of the pilot's chamber and then set the ship down at the Trans-Space base. It was the only way to save Lucky and the radium. I wasn't very optimistic about my own chances. I knew ...
— Larson's Luck • Gerald Vance
... Georg Ludwig" (Electoral Prince and Heir-Apparent), who became George I. of England; he, always a taciturn, saturnine, somewhat grim-visaged man, not without thoughts of his own but mostly inarticulate thoughts, was, just at this time, in a deep domestic intricacy. Uncle George the Kurprinz was painfully detecting, in these very months, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... instinct of her sex, presumed upon it. After the Sunday episode, already referred to, she was given her liberty on that day, a privilege she gracefully recognized by somewhat unbending her usual austerity in the indulgence of a saturnine humor. She would visit the mining camps, and, grazing lazily and thoughtfully before the cabins, would, by various artifices and coquetries known to the female heart, induce some credulous stranger to approach her with the intention of taking a ride. She would submit hesitatingly ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... heavy mouth into a faint smile—he was one of those saturnine people who smile with the corners of the mouth down,—and bowed his acknowledgment of my complaisance. The main entrance to the enclosure was passed; it was a heavy wooden gate, framed in iron and locked, with the cargo of the launch piled outside ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... dying light the man's saturnine features seemed to relax for a moment into something like a smile. ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... and shrank away, the colour flaming into his disgusted, saturnine face. He did not speak to her again until he said good-bye ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... another person from that tense, saturnine, defiant, brusk person who strode through the reception-hall. He was radiantly and boyishly happy. He was clasping the girl tenderly. He directed her steps in a small circle outside the throng of dancers, and waltzed as slowly as the tempo would ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... excitement in the house. The flare of a lamp moved rapidly from window to window. Then the kitchen door slammed loudly and a shawled figure sped towards the gate. At last he was making them feel his power. The shivering child's face was lit with saturnine glee as in the darkness of the wood-shed he gloated over the evidences of consternation in his home. The shawled figure had been his Aunt Martha dashing with the alarm to ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... sculptor copies the conventional artistic notion of light grace and ghostliness. The rustic foxes of Izumo have no grace: they are uncouth; but they betray in countless queer ways the personal fancies of their makers. They are of many moods—whimsical, apathetic, inquisitive, saturnine, jocose, ironical; they watch and snooze and squint and wink and sneer; they wait with lurking smiles; they listen with cocked ears most stealthily, keeping their mouths open or closed. There is an amusing individuality about them all, and an air of knowing mockery ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... immersed in what thoughts no one knew, and the scientists set out to obey his orders. Baxter, the British chemist, followed Penrose, the lantern-jawed, saturnine American engineer and inventor, as he made his way to the furthermost cubicle of ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... bravely and not won. We might have cast the coin, calling, 'Head,' and lo! Tail might have come uppermost." O thou Ruler of Victories!—thou Awarder of Fame!—thou Giver of Crowns (and shillings)—if thou hast smiled upon us, shall we not be thankful? There is a Saturnine philosopher, standing at the door of his book-shop, who, I fancy, has a pooh-pooh expression as the triumph passes. (I can't see quite clearly for the laurels, which have fallen down over my nose.) One hand is reining in the two white ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the light died out of his voice. Surely it was an evil omen, this man's coming; for it was Captain Francis who had taken the vacant seat and who was watching his astonishment with a somewhat saturnine smile. ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... is that the persons of that buoyant disposition which comes always heralded by a smile, as a yacht driven by a favoring breeze carries a wreath of sparkling foam before her, are born with their happiness ready made. They cannot help being cheerful any more than their saturnine fellow-mortal can help seeing everything through the cloud he carries with him. I give you the precept, then, Be cheerful, for just what it is worth, as I would recommend to you to be six feet, or at least five feet ten, in stature. You cannot settle that matter for yourself, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... corner, propped against the leather upholstery, was Mr. Cortlandt, as pale, as reserved, and as saturnine as at breakfast. He was sipping Scotch-and-soda, and in all the time that Anthony remained he did not speak to a soul save the waiter, did not shift his position save to beckon for another drink. Something about his sour, introspective aloofness displeased the onlooker, who shortly returned ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... life he had been wild and licentious, but had early laid aside open profligacy, and embraced the strictest tenets of Calvinism. Unfortunately, habits of excess and intemperance were more easily rooted out of his dark, saturnine, and enterprising spirit, than the vices of revenge and ambition, which continued, notwithstanding his religious professions, to exercise no small sway over his mind. Daring in design, precipitate and violent ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... blade of the barren grass-plots, which are forbidden ground to the feet of all the lower orders of the collegiate oligarchy. Many were the smiles and the jeers, from the worse natured and better appointed students, who loitered idly along the court, at the rude garb and saturnine appearance of the humble under-graduate; and the calm countenance of the grave, but amiable man, who then bore the honour and onus of mathematical lecturer at our college, would soften into a glance of mingled approbation and pity, as he noted the eagerness which spoke from the wan cheek and emaciated ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... have broad shoulders, they have but short lips and a thin beard, They are in character austere and reserved, covetous, laborious, and revengeful; constant in friendship, and good haters. The most remarkable and certain characteristic of the Saturnine man is that, as an old author observes 'he will never look thee in the face.' 'If they have to love any one, these Saturnines,' says another old author, 'they love most constantly; and if they hate, they hate to the death.' The persons signified symbolically ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... there is no serdab; or if discovering it I find no lamps in it, what then?' He smiled grimly with that saturnine smile of his, so rarely seen for years past, ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... fallen, crest fallen. sad, pensive, penseroso [It], tristful^; dolesome^, doleful; woebegone; lacrymose, lachrymose, in tears, melancholic, hypped^, hypochondriacal, bilious, jaundiced, atrabilious^, saturnine, splenetic; lackadaisical. serious, sedate, staid, stayed; grave as a judge, grave as an undertaker, grave as a mustard pot; sober, sober as a judge, solemn, demure; grim; grim-faced, grim-visaged; rueful, wan, long-faced. disconsolate; unconsolable, inconsolable; forlorn, comfortless, desolate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... belong to the widow of his last descendant. This territory, nominally assigned for the maintenance of the troops under the adventurer's command, was valued in those days at six laths of rupees annually; so that the blood-stained miscreant, whose saturnine manners had given him a bad name, even among the rough Europeans of the Company's battalion, found his career of crime rewarded by an income corresponding to that of many such petty sovereigns as those ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... distant sea, but when it came to securing passage, and in feverish, nervous haste the Frenchwoman had packed her chosen belongings into the one little trunk the stage people would consent to carry, lo! there came to her a messenger from headquarters where Colonel Byrne, grim, silent, saturnine, was again in charge. Any attempt on her part to leave would result in her being turned over at once to the civil authorities, and Elise understood and raved, but risked not going to jail. Mullins, nursed by his devoted Norah, was sitting up each day now, and had ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... negresses, the gay Creole gowns and scarfs, the linen-jacketed, broad-hatted merchants, with those of soberer and more conventional dress, laughing and chatting, the children playing despite the heat. Many of these people greeted Monsieur Vigo. There were the saturnine, long-cloaked Spaniards, too, and a greater number than I had believed of my own keen-faced countrymen lounging about, mildly amused by the scene. We crossed the square, and with the courtesy of their race the people made way for us in the press; and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... The former he affirms to be the choice of the French people, and the latter he insists is necessary to the salvation of these kingdoms. This last point a little inoffensive gentleman among us, of a saturnine aspect but simple conceptions, cannot comprehend. 'I will tell you, sir—I will make my propositions so clear that you will be convinced of the truth of my observation in a moment. Consider, sir, the number of trades that would be thrown ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... such excellent measures for his salvation as our dear friend did last evening, it seems almost a pity he should put it in peril again by returning to the world." M. Ledoux was a great Catholic, and Newman thought him a queer mixture. His countenance, by daylight, had a sort of amiably saturnine cast; he had a very large thin nose, and looked like a Spanish picture. He appeared to think dueling a very perfect arrangement, provided, if one should get hit, one could promptly see the priest. He seemed to take a great satisfaction in Valentin's interview with the cure, and yet his conversation ...
— The American • Henry James
... plot they called in a saturnine, lank, drunken individual whose name was Hube Maloney. Maloney picked out two men of his own type as assistants. He stipulated only that plenty of "refreshments" should be supplied. According to instructions Maloney was to operate ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... which a few hours ago would have been deemed profane, and Gurney actually volunteered the song of the "man wot got his nose froze;" but every one declined to listen to it, on the plea that it reminded them too forcibly of the cold of the early morning. Even the saturnine steward, Tarquin, looked less ferocious than usual, and King Bumble became so loquacious that he was ordered more than once to hold his ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... to Warden's office with an open mind; now he looked at the man with a saturnine smile in which there was amused contempt. Assuredly the new buyer did not "measure up" to Jim Lefingwell's "size," ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... (which cost half a lira more), upon which and the damp sinister rooms where the place of execution and oubliette were situated, a saturnine custodian says all that is necessary. Let me, however, quote a warning from the little Venetian guide-book: "Everybody to whom are pointed out the prisons to which Carmagnola, Jacopo Foscari, Antonio Foscarini, etc., were confined, will easily ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... That long saturnine face, behind which Lawford lay in a dull and desperate ambush, smiled. Something partaking of its clay, some reflex ghost of its rather remarkable features, was even ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... him at once all the signs of extreme nervous tension. The skin was puffed out under his sunken eyes, and its sallowness had paled to a leaden white against which his irregular eyebrows and long reddish moustache were relieved with a saturnine effect. His appearance, in short, presented an odd mixture of the bedraggled and ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... were not made for each other. He was thriftless, idle, dissolute—the small roue of the neighbourhood: she was careful, industrious, virtuous. He was good-looking—of a dark, saturnine beauty, insidiously impressive, like the dangerous charms of a tempter; she was radiant and lustrous with the sweet graces of modesty, innocence, and intelligence. Julia, however, young and susceptible, was ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... born in the month of February, 1605; all the biographers of our poet have observed, that his father was a man of a grave disposition, and a gloomy turn of mind, which his son did not inherit from him, for he was as remarkably volatile, as his father was saturnine. The same biographers have celebrated our author's mother as very handsome, whose charms had the power of attracting the admiration of Shakespear, the highest compliment which ever was paid to beauty. As Mr. Davenant, our poet's ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... radiated the myriad beams of the light of which they were the repositories to the remotest corners of the land. Let no one be alarmed at the mention of the word Puritan. There are some people who have no other notion of a Puritan than that of a close-cropped, saturnine personage, having a nasal twang, who is forevermore indulging an insane propensity to sing psalms, quote Scripture, or burn witches. These are the people who can never see into the profound deep of a great truth, but are quite ready to laugh at its travesty or caricature. And what high ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... much crowded with objects, and, though of admirable and enduring materials, suggests a spasmodic attempt to assimilate itself to the gala character of the occasion which called it forth. It is the saturnine one of the row. It is said that the pieces are numbered for re-erection ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... Charles Jacomb's assiduous, earnest, uncomplaining labour in that big parish had at the very outset won for him her great regard. He did not understand how he was destroying her childlike faith in him by his saturnine ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... while the flattened iris under the beetling brow of the falcons,—projecting, not in frown, but as roof, to shade the eye from interfering skylight,—gives them their apparently threatening and ominous gaze; the iris itself often wide and pale, showing as a lurid saturnine ring under the shadow of the ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... extremely vulgar and disrespectful, that I cannot comprehend the Tories. The men who uphold the dignity of the Crown to treat their Sovereign in such a manner, on such an occasion! Even in private life the most sour and saturnine people relax and grow gay and mildly disposed on occasions like this. Clearly, as you are Queen Regnant, Albert's position is to all intents and purposes that of a male Queen Consort, and the same privileges and charges ought to be attached to it which were attached ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... thought of how well he had come to know her in the last three weeks surprised him. When he had first met her in Egypt she had been the young, very pretty wife of Colonel Crofton, an elderly "dug-out," odd and saturnine, whose manner to his wife was not always over-kindly. No one out there had been much surprised when she had decided to brave the submarine ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... water a considerable solvent power of action on the lead, which, in its natural state it did not possess. Hence the necessity of keeping leaden cisterns clean; and this is the more necessary, as their situations expose them to accidental impurities. The noted saturnine colic of Amsterdam, described by Tronchin, originated from such a circumstance; as also the case related by Van Swieten,[21] of a whole family afflicted with the same complaint, from such a cistern. And it is highly probable that the case of disease recorded by Dr. Duncan,[22] proceeded more from ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... that the honest men are to desert their country in order that the dishonest men may have everything their own way." Our Duke could not answer this, and therefore for the moment he yielded. But he was unhappy, saturnine, and generally silent except when closeted with his ancient mentor. And he knew that he was saturnine and silent, and that it behoved him as a leader of men to be genial and communicative,—listening to counsel even if he did not ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... Blake." To the rear Speed saw three other men—an Indian, tall, swart, and saturnine, who walked with a limp; a picturesque Mexican with a spangled hat and silver spurs, evidently the captor of Lawrence Glass on the evening previous; and an undersized little man with thick-rimmed spectacles and a heavy-hanging ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... them grew saturnine at that announcement. For Chairman Presson was not recognized as the especial friend of prohibition by ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... now said Cromwell, still looking the agreeable—so far as his saturnine features would admit of such expression—"to what happy circumstance am I indebted for the honour of ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... and a charm against the evil-eye hanging in a crease of her neck) and lastly by Don Egidio, the parocco of the little church across the street. The doctor and his wife came only on feast days, but the overseer and Don Egidio were regular patrons. The former was a quiet saturnine-looking man, of accomplished manners but reluctant speech, and I depended for my diversion chiefly on Don Egidio, whose large loosely-hung lips were always ajar for conversation. The remarks issuing from them ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... mosquito-portage by the half-breed driver, who declared that last year a red-fox on the Slave stole a decoy duck and hunted with it for three seasons at the river-lip, placing it among the sedges and pouncing on the lured game. He was a serious-minded saturnine Scots-Slavi and told the story without ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... years, Barney had never been admitted to the inner chambers of the older man's character. He sensed that there were hidden rooms and twisting passages; and of this much he was certain, that Old Jimmie was sly and saturnine. ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... conceived that, as the years passed by, as the period of the Truce grew nearer and the religious disputes became every day more envenomed, the government at Madrid should look on the tumultuous scene with saturnine satisfaction. There was little doubt now, they thought, that the Provinces, sick of their rebellion and that fancied independence which had led them into a whirlpool of political and religious misery, and convinced of their ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... saturnine spleen) Bah! It is because it is. Woman's reason. Jewgreek is greekjew. Extremes meet. Death is the highest form of ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... alienation in conjunction with neurosis (epilepsy, hysteria, progressive general paralysis); alienation resulting from toxic influences (alcoholism, including forms produced by indulgence in absinthe and coca, saturnine encephalopathy, pellagra). An investigation is made into the etiology of these various forms with special reference to their ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... quite recovered himself, Mr. Hamlin lounged gracefully across the hall into the parlor. As he did so, a darkish young man, with a slim boyish figure, a thin face, and a discontented expression, rose from an armchair, held out his hand, and, with a saturnine smile, said:— ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... are they, even when travellers are compelled, at some abrupt turn, almost to ride over them. A few sombre garbed Israelites, and occasionally the Turks, attendant on official duties of the Pashalic in this part of the government, also mingle in the passing or seated crowd; when the solemn, saturnine air of the latter, with their flowing, gaudy apparel, forms a striking contrast to the daring, dirty, independent air of the almost ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... a gaunt, long-legged person with a saturnine countenance. He wore a seersucker coat with a nickel badge pinned ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... Gifford's table was of uncommon importance to this man or this woman. Secondly, the woman, though plainly and inconspicuously clad, had the face of a more than ordinarily unscrupulous adventuress, while her companion was one of those saturnine-faced men we sometimes meet, whose first look puts us on our guard and whom, if we hope nothing from him, we instinctively shun. Third, they did not look like inhabitants of the house and rooms in which he found them. Nothing beyond the necessary articles of furniture was to be seen there; ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... like him, is it? He's much lovelier than that. He's SO beautiful-mmm, Looloo, my sweet darling.' And she flew off to embrace the chagrined little dog. He looked up at her with reproachful, saturnine eyes, vanquished in his extreme agedness of being. Then she flew back to her drawing, and ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... it refers to the canoe (a Carib word) pop. "dug-out" and classically "monoxyle," a boat made of a single tree-trunk hollowed by fire and trimmed with axe and adze. Some of these rude craft which, when manned, remind one of saturnine Caliph Omar's "worms floating on a log of wood," measure 60 feet ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... gate, and acted as porter. To this office he had been promoted by my friend's charitable feelings for an old soldier, and partly by an idea that his head, which was a very fine one, bore some resemblance to that of Garrick in the character of Lusignan. He was a man saturnine, silent, and slow in his proceedings, and would never open the PORTE COCHERE to a hackney coach, indicating the wicket with his finger as the proper passage for all who came in that obscure vehicle, which was ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... Aaron Sproul down at his door that afternoon he emphasized the embarrassed silence that had continued during the ride by driving away without a word. Equally as saturnine, Cap'n Sproul walked through his dooryard, the battered plug hat in his hand, paying no heed to the somewhat agitated questions of his wife. She watched his march ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... hands, was composed of beans which had grown from his flesh; and this belt was circulated far and wide by Indian runners, finding its way even to the Red River of the North. These, coupled with his oratory and mummeries, greatly enhanced an influence which was possibly added to by a gloomy and saturnine countenance, made more forbidding still by the loss of an eye. Unfortunately for Tecumseh's enterprise, the Prophet was more bent upon personal notoriety than upon the welfare of his people; and, whilst professing the latter, indulged his ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education |
