"Stiff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... table is not the best for literary work, but it may be the best for letter-writing. Of chairs, one good, firm, hard-seated chair is necessary. Mr. Ellwanger[50] says, 'I have two chairs for my reading—a stiff one for books I have to read; a luxurious one for books I like to read. My luxurious chair is of dark green leather, a treat to sink into, modelled after the easy armchair of the Eversley Rectory, ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... trembling. So was Blizzard. He was trembling with stage fright; she with Blizzard fright. His hands, thick with agile muscles and heavy as hams, though he had just been soaking them in hot water, seemed powerless to him, and stiff. ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... Palaeologae was in Basilean costume; a golden circlet on his head brilliantly jewelled and holding a purple velvet cap in place; an overgown of the material of the cap but darker in tint, and belted at the waist; a mantle stiff with embroidery of pearls hanging by narrow bands so as to drop from the shoulder over the breast and back, leaving the neck bare; an ample lap-robe of dark purple cloth sparkling with precious stones covering his nether limbs. The chair was square in form without back or arms; its front ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... asleep. He was very tired, and fairly worn out with the excitement as well as the fatigue of the long summer's day, and he slept heavily. How long he did not know, when he started to his feet suddenly, to find himself quite damp from a heavy dew, chilled, stiff, sore, and, worst of all, hungry. The park was quite deserted and very dark, still he knew his way tolerably well, and hurried towards the gate, shivering partly with cold, partly with nervousness, at finding himself quite alone in the dark—everything was so gloomy and weird. When he ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... say the word, although, strange as it may seem, she also, down deep in her heart, was longing for Hollyhock, longing as she had never longed for a human being before. She had been brought up in a stiff, cold home, by a stiff, cold mother, and it was hard for her to go against her nature. The girls of Ardshiel were altogether on the side of Hollyhock, and Leucha was more lonely than ever. Her angry boast that she would write to her mother and ask to be taken from the school ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... quantities. In the close jungle one occasionally hears the call of the copper-smith[1], or the strokes of the great orange-coloured woodpecker[2] as it beats the decaying trees in search of insects, whilst clinging to the bark with its finely-pointed claws, and leaning for support upon the short stiff feathers of its tail. And on the lofty branches of the higher trees, the hornbill[3] (the toucan of the East), with its enormous double casque, sits to watch the motions of the tiny reptiles and smaller birds on which it preys, tossing them into the air ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... he felt now; and, you can imagine my supprise, sir, when I seen that William Jones was fast asleep! I was skeered at first; but in a minute I seen that I had hypnertized him unbeknown to myself, and there set William Jones 's if he was froze stiff. ...
— Frictional Electricity - From "The Saturday Evening Post." • Max Adeler
... able to enter the reception-room. There Madeleine found herself before two seemingly mechanical figures, which might be wood or wax, for any sign they showed of life. These two figures were the President and his wife; they stood stiff and awkward by the door, both their faces stripped of every sign of intelligence, while the right hands of both extended themselves to the column of visitors with the mechanical action of toy dolls. Mrs. Lee for a moment began to laugh, but the laugh died on her ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... packed a basket, gathered the stiff, dry bathing suits from the grass, and lunched far up in the woods. Fishing gear was carried along, although the trout ran small, and each fish provided only a buttery, delicious mouthful. Susan learned to swim and was more proud of her first breathless journey across ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... think of;' and another says: 'Callinan was very apt: it was all Raftery could do to beat him;' and another sums up by saying: 'The both of them was great.' But a supporter of Raftery says: 'He was the best; he put his words so strong and stiff, following one another.' ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... Norfolk, Master of the Horse to WILLIAM IV. and QUEEN VICTORIA (it is to ALBEMARLE in this capacity that the IRON DUKE said: "The Queen can make you go inside the coach, or outside the coach, or run behind it like a d——d tinker's dog"), winner of the Ascot Gold Cup three years running and stiff-backed autocrat; an account of the beautiful Misses CATON of Baltimore and their matrimonial adventures—the American invasion of brides bringing money and beauty in exchange for titles thus dating back to 1816; some details of the lives of two artists, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... He was stiff with lying in that cramped place. He was strongly tempted to climb out and see how matters lay. For he might be able to find out in the dark, whereas daylight would make him ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... her—it was impossible to do otherwise—but there was no yielding in his action. He held himself as straight and stiff as a soldier on parade. He had bitten through his cigarette, and he ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... erected like a stiff bottle-brush, and every individual hair galvanised into a perpendicular position on his back, which was curved into the position of a bent bow with rage and excitement, his whiskers bristling out from each side of ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... ever cut a funnier monkey shine than the up-and-down high-jump dance and floor-slapping act of our Boma chimpanzee (1921). Boma offers this whenever he becomes especially desirous of entertaining a party of distinguished visitors. In stiff dancing posture, he leaps high in the air, precisely like a great black jumping-jack straight from Dante's Inferno. Orangs love to turn somersaults, and some individuals are so persistent about it as to wear the hair off their backs, disfigure ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... old fellow," replied Coleman. "Thanks to Fairlegh in the first instance, and a stiff glass of brandy-and-water in ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... courage than any act of his life for the loyal Bouchard to dare such candor to a superior. Seeing the patchy, yellow, bloodless face drawn in stiff lines and the abysmal stare of the deep-set eyes in their bony recesses, Bellini was swept with a wave ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... she was so anxious that her speech should seem plain to them, that for the few first moments, from sheer nervousness, she could not utter a word. Then the doctor entered, a tall, well-built man, with stiff, iron-grey hair and imperial, and an expression of genial contentment with himself and the rest ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... then, having recognized these things and having measured the fighting-element, knew that they were squarely up against a slow, grim, relentless war if they would save the Flying U. They knew that it was going to be a pretty stiff proposition, and that they would have to obey strictly the letter and the spirit of the land laws, or there would be contests and quarrels and trouble ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... was all mighty good, as long as the king had his health; but, you see, in course of time the king grew old, by raison he was stiff in his limbs, and when he got stricken in years, his heart failed him, and he was lost entirely for want o' diversion, because he couldn't go a-hunting no longer; and, by dad, the poor king was obliged at ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... bathed and dressed me in my best suit of pale-lilac silk, with flapped waistcoat of primrose stiff with gold, and Cato was powdering my hair; when Sir Lupus waddled in, magnificent in scarlet and white, and smelling to heaven of French perfume ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... mother, and many others of Mrs. Sinclair's pupils, were sent afterwards to be finished off by the Honorable Mrs. Ogilvie, a lady who trained her young friends to a style of manners which would now be considered intolerably stiff. Such was the effect of this early training upon the mind {p.067} of Mrs. Scott, that even when she approached her eightieth year, she took as much care to avoid touching her chair with her back as if she had still been under the stern eye of Mrs. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... the muscles of the face twitch, the body is stiff, immovable, and then in a short time, in a state of twitching motion, the head and neck are drawn backwards and the limbs violently bent and stretched. Sometimes these movements are confined to certain muscles or are limited to one side, and I may add that ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... recent sabotage and a secret decision of the committee which the long one had carried through, were back of it, rapidly became a conviction. In his mind he sneered: "We'll see who leaves the house first." He nodded convulsively and left the room with stiff knees. He thought by himself: "He wants me to feel his power" and "He denounced me so as to get me away from his wife. He is a wretched scoundrel one must get rid of!" These three conclusions henceforth determined his thoughts and ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... programme. Would she play the Adagio?—meaning, of course, that in Spohr's Concerto 9. No, no; not the Adagio—not on any account the Adagio! Something of Bach's?—yes; perhaps the Chaconne. And Brahms? There was the Sonata in A for violin and piano. A stiff piece, but one must not be too popular—Heaven forbid that one should catch at cheap applause! How about a trio? What was that thing of Dvorak's, at St James's Hall not long ago? Yes, the trio in B flat—piano, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... consciousness he was aware of a gentle swaying motion of his body. He opened his eyes, and saw it was high noon, and that he was being carried in a litter through the valley. He felt stiff, and, looking down, perceived that his arm was tightly bandaged ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... in the parlor I began to experience a little embarrassment. Mrs. Hollenbeck was so pretty and her dress was so dainty, the dingy, stiff, old parlor filled me with dismay. Fortunately, I did not think much of myself or my own dress. But after a little, she put me at ease, that is, drew me out and made me feel like talking ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... curiously, but I was mad enough at Fred to show him that I could be as cool as anybody, after I got used to it. I hemmed, wiped the perspiration from my face—caused now more by the needle than by the heat—and remarked, sitting stiff as a ramrod ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... he is one of the family? We have modified him, as he has influenced us a little; we shall end by being made in the same image, and this is so true that now, when I see him, half blind, with wandering gaze, his legs stiff with rheumatism, I kiss him on both cheeks as if he were a poor old relation who had fallen to my charge. Ah, animals, all creeping and crawling things, all creatures that lament, below man, how large a place in our sympathies it ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... Imperial arms in Turkey had even enhanced the customary display, and the standards of the cavalry and colours of the battalions, were stiff with the embroidered titles of captured fortresses and conquered fields. Turkish instruments of music figured among the troops, and the captive horse-tails were conspicuous in more than one corps, which had plucked down the pride ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... guns fired, the organ struck up, and the procession entered. I never saw so magnificent a scene. All down that immense vista of gloomy arches there was one blaze of scarlet and gold. First came heralds in coats stiff with embroidered lions, unicorns, and harps; then nobles bearing the regalia, with pages in rich dresses carrying their coronets on cushions; then the Dean and Prebendaries of Westminster in copes of cloth ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... "Big stiff!" Yancey said under his breath. "He'll ask him, all right, and right out in meetin'. He never believes anything he hears until he has asked a thousand questions about it. What do you see in that fellow ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... influence from Alexandria, though not independently of the Greek spirit, had already created a multitude of intermediate beings between God and the world, avowing thereby that the idea of God had become stiff and rigid. "Its original aim was simply to help the God of Judaism in his need." Among these intermediate beings should be specially mentioned the Memra of God (see also ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... Kendall sat frozen and stiff. Each looked at the other abruptly, then Kendall moved. From the receiver, he ripped out the recording coil, and instantly jammed it into the analyzer. He started it through once, then again, then again, at different tone settings, till he found a very shrill whine that seemed ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... were not in the very upper circles of society, not in the Dress Circle, so to speak, but they formed a very necessary foundation, they stood for propriety and decency, and the Petticoats were stiff enough ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... to the divine call, would follow and join with him than did; for, singularly enough, not one of the members of the Transcendental Club, who first met together, joined Mr. Ripley's movement. They were all radical to the prevailing theology, stiff, rigid as it was, and never, in America, was there a group assembled who aimed higher, or did more, first and last, to elevate humanity; for the Club contained a galaxy ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... under the dead leaves of the prickly 'Spaniard,' and possibly fed on the roots. The Spaniard leaves forked into stiff upright fingers about 1 in. wide, ending in ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... she was struggling heavily to her feet. "Yes, do, for goodness' sakes, haul me up, will ye? I'm as stiff as an old horse. I don't know what makes me so rheumaticky. My folks ain't, as ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... He was entirely willing to send a subaltern and a score of troopers to convoy the entire party—sheriff and deputies, posse and prisoners—to the territorial capital, but, like the old war-horse he was, he balked, stiff-necked and stiff-legged, at the sheriff's demand that the escort should report to him—should be, in point of fact, under ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... cliffs; the wind screaming and whistling through our grey and frozen rigging; the water washing in floods about our decks, with the ends of the running gear snaking about in the torrent, and the live stock lying drowned and stiff in their coops and ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... "I was awfully scared! I could see us both frozen stiff under the snow, and the dogs nosing us out as they do travelers ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... now—if thou wouldst utter it with that open angelic mien—if thou wouldst but persuade mine ear and eye, though it should deceive my heart ever so monstrously! Oh, Louisa! Then might truth depart in the same breath—depart from our creation, and the sacred cause itself henceforth bow her stiff neck to the courtly arts ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Senators and Congressmen from political motives and for political services rendered, it is impossible to expect that while in office the appointees will not regard their tenure as more or less dependent upon continued political service for their patrons, and no regulations, however stiff or rigid, will prevent this, because such regulations, in view of the method and motive for selection, are plainly inconsistent and deemed hardly ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... swing, What to them will Santa bring? All of them I'm sure he'll fill, Make them round and stiff and still. (n) ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... It was a stiff scramble up the conical hill to the little hamlet at the top, built out of and among ruins. The mosque, evidently an old Christian church remodelled, was bare, but fairly clean, cool, and tranquil. We peered through a ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... it. I have heard my father say that on the occasion of this visit of Talma's to London, he consulted my uncle on the subject of acting in English. Hamlet was one of his great parts, and he made as fine a thing of Ducis' cold, and stiff, and formal adaptation of Shakespeare's noble work as his meagre material allowed; but, as I have said before, he spoke English well, and thought it not impossible to undertake the part in the original language. My uncle, however, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... leg quiet for three days but, the third evening, he was well enough to go down the village to the schoolhouse. After the lesson was over he walked for some distance up the road, for his leg was very stiff; and he thought it would be a good thing to try and walk it off, as he intended to go to work next morning. On getting up early in the morning, however, he found it was still stiff and sore; but he thought he had better go and try to work ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... her head as he went towards the door. Her lips were stiff and dry. She could not speak even the common words of farewell. But suddenly she walked forwards, and opened the study door, and preceded him to the door of the house, which she threw wide open for his exit. She kept her eyes upon him in the same dull, fixed manner, until he ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... of metal or a stiff piece of whalebone be fixed at one end in a vice, and then sharply pulled to one side and suddenly let go, a sound results. The same effect is produced when a tight cord or small rope is plucked at and then suddenly released. In each of these cases, ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... made it hard and dry and crisp. The streams must have felt very queer when they were dropping off into the mesmeric trance, and found themselves stopped in the very act of running, their supple limbs growing stiff and heavy and their voices dying in their throats, till they were thrown into a deep sleep, and a strange white, still, glassy beauty stole over them by the magic power of frost. The sun got up rather late, no doubt—between eight and nine o'clock—probably ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... the ladies found their dinner a pleasant one, and that the writer of the note was neither a stiff nor unsocial host. A much more charming letter is one to Nellie Custis, on the occasion of her first ball. It is too long for quotation, but it is a model of affectionate wisdom tinged with a gentle humor, and designed to guide a young girl just beginning ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... the meanest slave owner I ever knowed. He would beat his slaves and everybody else's he caught in the road. He was so mean 'til God let him freeze to death. He come to town and got drunk and when he was going back home in his buggy, he froze stiff going up Race Creek Hill. White and colored ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... disappeared. The dogs did not lie down, but on their feet eagerly waited his return. He came back to them, took a hauling-rope from the front of the sled, and put it around his shoulders. Then he gee'd the dogs to the right and put them at the bank on the run. It was a stiff pull, but their weariness fell from them as they crouched low to the snow, whining with eagerness and gladness as they struggled upward to the last ounce of effort in their bodies. When a dog slipped or faltered, the one behind nipped his hind quarters. The man ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... "I had rather a stiff headache last night, and only got to sleep when it was nearly time to get up. I hope I didn't wake you coming home last night? That idiot Walters must needs turn out the gas and go to sleep in the hall. Of course I kicked him over. ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... plain lost. Surely I must have come fifty miles, and I followed their directions exactly, and now I'm tired, and stiff, and sore, and hungry, and lost." A grim little smile tightened the corners of her mouth. "But I'm glad I came. If Aunt Rebecca could see me now! Wouldn't she just gloat? 'I told you so, my dear, just as I often told your poor father, to have nothing whatever to do with that horrible ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... about amongst those granite boulders. My back's a bit stiff too. There, let's go into the parlour, light up, and then you shall fetch down ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... there on the hot black ground. My head felt like a block of stone, and my neck was stiff so that I could not move my head. My throat was swelled and dry as a sand-hill, and there was a roaring in my ears like a cataract. I thought of the cool waterfalls among the rocks far away in Devon. I thought ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... do we dance to other measures than those of the waltz, though at times we find a relief from the luxuriance of that divine rhythm in the cooler cadences of the Schottish. By universal consent and instinct, we banish the quadrille, stiff and artificial; the polka, inelegant and essentially vulgar; and the various hybrid measures with which the low ingenuity of professors has filled society. But we move like gods and goddesses to the sadly joyful strains of Strauss and Weber and Beethoven and Mozart, and the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... could not see far, but at last the man made out an object toiling slowly toward the cabin. At first he thought it was a fox, and then a wolf, and then, as it loomed larger, a straying caribou. Kazan whined. The bristles along his spine rose stiff and menacing. Pelliter stared harder and harder, with his face pressed close against the cold glass of the window, and suddenly he gave a gasping cry of excitement. It was a man who was toiling toward the cabin! He was bent almost ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... father's fondness centres on the son. Rich presents, too, he sends for, saved of old From Troy, a veil, whose saffron edges shone Fringed with acanthus, glorious to behold, A broidered mantle, stiff ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... knees. Arthur was ardent and swift and ready of wit. He remembered his manhood, and struggled upright on his feet. He was altogether angered, and fearful of what might hap. Since strength could not help, he called subtlety to his aid. Arthur made his body stiff like a rod, and held himself close, for he was passing strong. He feigned to spring on his foe, but turning aside, slipped quickly from under the giant's arms. When Arthur knew his person free of these bands, he passed swiftly to and fro, eluding his enemy's clasp. Now he was here, now there, ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... formed those last words as her head fell back against her chair, all the light fading out of her eyes, and then she slipped away into unconsciousness. When she came to herself again she was cold, and stiff, and deathly sick. ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... not," the foreman answered. "Anyway, I never did. It's a little animal all covered with sharp things. It's just as if your kitty's fur was about three or four times as long as it is, and every hair was stiff and sharp. There's a great rattling as they walk, I'm told. The Indians used to sew the quills—the sharp things—on their soft leather slippers, because ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... the arms, captain," the noble fellow replied, while the big tears of grateful happiness gushed from his eyes—"a little stiff in the arms, captain, but very easy here," and he laid his hand on ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... insects pass the winter in the larval or active stage of the young. Of these, perhaps the best known is the brown "woolly worm" or "hedgehog caterpillar," as it is familiarly called. It is thickly covered with stiff black hairs on each end, and with reddish hairs on the middle of the body. These hairs appear to be evenly and closely shorn, so as to give the animal a velvety look; and as they have a certain degree of elasticity, and the caterpillar curls up at the slightest touch, it generally manages ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... than those in which she had left it, and she was going back with the memory of the happiness she had lost. All the grief and trouble that girls of her class have so frequently to bear gathered in Esther's heart when she looked out of the railway carriage window and saw for the last time the stiff plantations on the downs and the angles of the Italian house between the trees. She drew her handkerchief from her jacket, and hid her distress as well as she could from the other occupants of ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... the good fortune of starting in life as a graduate," explained Tzu-tsing as he smiled, "and yet are not aware of the saying uttered by some one of old: that a centipede even when dead does not lie stiff. (These families) may, according to your version, not be up to the prosperity of former years, but, compared with the family of an ordinary official, their condition anyhow presents a difference. Of late the number of the inmates has, day ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... at this pheasant," ordered Chawner; and the young man handled the bird and found it stiff ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... of ascetics, and this is not an ascetic age," he said at length, with a half-laugh at himself for his stiff speech. ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... with native wit, and constant practice in the conversation of society. . . . On Wednesday, we dined at Sir Robert Peel's, with whom I was more charmed than with anybody I have seen yet. I sat between him and the Speaker of the House of Commons. I was told that he was stiff and stately in his manners, but did not think him so, and am inclined to imagine that free from the burden of the Premiership, he unbends more. He talked constantly with me, and in speaking of a certain picture said, "When you come ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... stiff all over, his head was heavy and his mind a blank.... And then came a thirst, a ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... lady is my pal. There are times when a man has to tell things to a woman. That's what women are for. When you feel you've got to tell things to a woman, you come and tell them to H lne. Don't be afraid of that peacock of a doorman; push him over. He's so stiff ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... bearing his great gifts with such sweetness and modesty, and touching with such tenderness and depth the most delicate and the purest of human feelings, and Keble as the editor of Fronde's Remains, forward against Dr. Hampden, breaking off a friendship of years with Dr. Arnold, stiff against Liberal change and indulgent to ancient folly and error, the eulogist of patristic mysticism and Bishop Wilson's "discipline," and busy in the ecclesiastical agitations and legal wranglings of our later days, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... in conversation; but though she answered, with a kind of stiff civility, I could get her into no freedom of discourse, and she began to look at her wheel and at the door more than once, as if she meditated a retreat. I was obliged, therefore, to proceed to some special questions; that might have interest for a person whose ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... "Baccalaureate Sermon" in the largest church; the "Prize Speaking" in the nearest "Opera House"; and last, but not least, the "Graduation Ball" in the Town Hall. The boys suffer agonies in patent-leather boots, high, stiff collars and blue serge suits; the girls suffer torments of jealousy over the fortunate few whose white organdie dresses come "ready-made" straight from Boston. The Valedictorian, the winner at "Prize Speaking," the belle of the parties, are great and glorious beings ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... waiting on every one, scarcely sitting down for a minute before she was sure that pepper, or pickle, or new bread, or stale bread, or something was wanted, and squeezing round the table to help some one, or to ring the bell every third minute, and all in a dress that had a teasing stiff silken rustle. She offered Mr. Kendal everything in the shape of food, till he purchased peace by submitting to take a hard biscuit, while Albinia was not allowed her glass of water till all manner of wines, foreign and domestic, had been tried upon ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... smells of moist leaves. It is as different to the sharp dry air of the Canterbury ranges as velvet is to canvas; it soothes, and in hot weather relaxes. The black birch with dark trunk, spreading branches, and light leaves, is now mingled with the queenly rimu, and the stiff, small-leaved, formal white pine. Winding and hanging plants festoon everything, and everything is bearded with long streamers of moss, not grey but rich green and golden. Always some river rushes along in sight or fills the ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... the flood. Only five birds were saved from the flood. One was a flicker and one a vulture. They clung by their beaks to the sky to keep themselves above the waters, but the tail of the flicker was washed by the waves and that is why it is stiff to this day. At last a god took pity on them and gave them power to make "nests of down" from their own breasts on which they floated on the water. One of these birds was the vipisimal, and if any one injures it to this day, the ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... was fairly easy to put on, though the brogans, or brogues, were quite a problem. As stiff and hard as if made of wood, it was only after a prolonged pounding of the uppers with my fists that I was able to get my feet into them at all. Then, with a few shillings, a knife, a handkerchief, and some brown papers ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... so much, and so loosened the joints that were beginning to feel very stiff and painful, that Derrick believed he was able, before going to bed, to perform the one duty still remaining to be done. Mrs. Sterling thought he had gone to bed, and was greatly surprised to see him come from his room fully dressed. When ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... returned to Saint Winifred's, as he supposed, for the last time. His guardian, a stiff, unsympathising man, had informed him, that as his mother's annuity ceased with her life, there was very little left to support him. The sale, however, of the house at Fuzby, and the scholarship which he had just won, would serve ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... field, the moon was shining clear, the wind was blowing a stiff gale from the north, and the sheaves of corn, where any moisture had attached to them, were frozen as hard as iron. There was only one of the working horses now serviceable: to supply the place of another, a colt ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... said, 'But well then, what is it? Simply a trolley car.' Next day the daughter of the house appeared before her schoolmates in the high school with the following:''Girls, I heard a great joke yesterday; one can go in from in front or behind, only one must be stiff.' " [A neat contribution, by the way, to the psychology of innocent girlhood.] The anecdote was related to T. by a man later known to him as a homosexual. T. had been with few Hungarians, but with these ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... track of blood where the stones were cruel, and a holding of breath when the fitful flare lights lit up the way; covered at times by mud from nearby bursting shells; faint and sick, but continuing to creep; chilled and sore and stiff, blinded and bleeding and torn, shell holes and stones and miring mud, slippery and sharp and never ending, ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... full an hour before sunrise. Cheery voices and hearty faces greet you, and there seems to be no maimed, or sick, or poor. From the simple fact that you are on the river, there is a brotherhood with every sailor. The mode is supple as the water, not like the stiff fashion of the land. Ships and shipmen soon become the "people." The other folks on shore are, to be sure, pretty numerous, but then they are ashore. Undoubtedly they are useful to provide for us who are afloat the butter, eggs, and bread they do certainly produce; and we gaze pleasantly ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... before me among the images of many and will not down. The fabric of which this particular garment was made was colored a light cream, not to say yellow. There was a black stripe, a piece of round black braid down each leg, too, and the garment was as heavy as broadcloth and as stiff as a board. Nothing could have been more unsuitable for a boy to wear than that was. I rebelled and protested with all the strength of my infantile nature, but it was needs must—I had either to wear them or to remain in bed indefinitely. Swallowing my pride, in spite of my mortification, ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... his way to the beach where at the tip of a slender bar of sand jutting out into the ocean the low roofs of the life-saving station lay outlined against a somber sky. Great banks of leaden clouds sagging over the horizon had dulled the water to blackness, and a stiff gale was whistling inshore. Already the billows were mounting angrily into caps of snarling foam and dashing themselves on the sands with threatening echo. It promised to be a nasty night, and Jack ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... but it had surely taken its character from certain features of her own: it was clear, firm, individual. It had nothing of that air of general debility which usually marks the manuscript of young ladies, yet its firmness was far removed from the stiff, conventional slope which all Englishwomen seem to acquire in youth and retain through life. I don't see how any man in my situation could have helped reading a few lines—if only for the sake of restoring ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... not bent to the southwest. The explanation given was, that the south winds prevail in the time of sap, when the trees are supple with life and heavy with foliage, and consequently, that they yield before them. But when the winter comes they are hard and firm, rigid and stiff, and even the fury of the tempest affects them not. Thus is it with human souls. When humility fills the heart, when its gentleness renders susceptible its thoughts and feelings, the softest breath of God's Spirit can bend it earthward to help the needy, and ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... and admirals, and even members of the Government; in vain Mr. LYNCH sought from him an admission that the life of one private soldier was more valuable than that of the two Front Benches put together. All these attempts at manipulative surgery quite failed to reduce Mr. MACPHERSON'S obstinate stiff neck; and at last the SPEAKER had to intervene ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 28, 1917 • Various
... their own peculiar national dress—the most rational of all—with the pig-tail coiled into a chignon. The pure natives and many half-breeds wore the shirt outside the trousers. It was usually white, with a long stiff front, and cut European fashion; but often it was made of an extremely fine yellow-tinted expensive material, called pina (vide p. 283). Some few of the native jeunesse doree of Manila donned the European dress, much to their apparent discomfort. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... of his sudden, stiff bows, the Comte de Virieu turned on his heel, leaving Sylvia to make her way alone to the little wooden gate on which were painted the words ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... by the imaginary, looked up. She had gone. From the sling he took his arm. The elbow was stiff, though less stiff than it had been. Moreover the wrist moved readily and the fingers were as flexible as before. Consoled by that, comforted already, he shuffled into the kitchen and consumed ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... Innocent, rode stiff in the saddle, staring sad-eyed into the gloom, nor felt, nor heeded the yielding tenderness of the shapely young body he held, but plodded on through the dark, frowning blacker than the night. Now as he rode thus, little by little the pain of his wound ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... harbour at Carthagena was formed, as at St. Domingo and Port Royal, by a sandspit. The spit was long, narrow, in places not fifty yards wide, and covered with prickly bush, and along this, as before, it was necessary to advance to reach the city. A trench had been cut across at the neck, and a stiff barricade built and armed with heavy guns; behind this were several hundred musketeers, while the bush was full of Indians with poisoned arrows. Pointed stakes—poisoned also—had been driven into the ground along the approaches, on which to ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... the way, followed by a brass St. Andrew as stiff as a poker and as much resembling St. Andrew as I conceive; but my companion the Grenadier thought differently, for he pronounced him to be a Chef d'oeuvre. "Well now, Jack, that's quite ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... would have been all right, only for that big stiff, Bunk Lander. He threatened to punch me up, and I knew he was just the sort of a brainless fellow to do it. Only for his interference, Barville would have taken the game, and we'd ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... process of rooting for the peg: how the operator got upon his knees, keeping his arms stiff by his sides, leaned forward, and extracted the peg ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... at a group of men who stood against an ivy-covered wall in the stiff attitudes in which photographers arrange masses of sitters. He fixed his attention on the two figures indicated by Mr. Quarterpage, and saw two medium-heighted, rather sturdily-built men about whom there ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... A stiff Sea Breeze was having the wildest, merriest time, rocking the sailboats and fluttering the sails, chasing the breakers far up the beach, sending the fleecy cloudsails scudding across the blue ocean above, making old ocean roar with delight at its mad pranks, while all the ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... aserti. station : stacio, stacidomo. steak : bifsteko. steel : sxtalo. steep : kruta; trempi. steer : direkti, piloti. step : sxtupo; pasxi. steppe : stepo. steward : intendanto. stick : bastono, glui,(—"bills") afisxi. stiff : rigida. still : kvieta; ankoraux, tamen. stimulate : stimuli. sting : piki. stipulate : kondicxi. stock : provizi. stocks : rentoj. stocking : sxtrumpo. stoker : hejtisto. stomach : stomako. stone : sxtono, (of fruit) grajno. stool : skabelo, benketo. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... late to make her either, the name, and even the nominal guardianship, and what the old childish affection had clung to, were gone — and never could come back; and Elizabeth wept sometimes with a very bowed head and heart, and sometimes sat stiff and quiet, gazing at the varying mountain outline, and the fathomless shadows that ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... side, hold the female, whilst she runs with great swiftness on the sandy beach, and there deposits her spawn. (2. The 'American Naturalist,' April 1871, p. 119.) The widely distinct Monacanthus scopas presents a somewhat analogous structure. The male, as Dr. Gunther informs me, has a cluster of stiff, straight spines, like those of a comb, on the sides of the tail; and these in a specimen six inches long were nearly one and a half inches in length; the female has in the same place a cluster of bristles, which may be compared with those of a tooth-brush. In ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... become well acquainted with him?" she asked, after a pause; "Charles is not stiff—too free and easy, I fear, and ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... the road, the horse in the act of trotting, with his head held high and two legs in the air, but perfectly motionless. In the buggy a man and a woman were seated; but had they been turned into stone they could not have been more still and stiff. ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... this time gaining strength fast, but his back was so stiff and sore that he was unable to move it, and was obliged to swing himself along on crutches. The next day the coach took them to London, and they started the morning after for Marlborough. This time they had to go inside the coach, two gentlemen, who had previously secured the seats, ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... Lady Rythdale once before, in a stately visit which had been made at the Lodge; never except that one time. The old baroness was a dignified looking person, and gave her a stately reception now; rather stiff and cold, Eleanor thought; or careless ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... I mean. I knew you'd understand and I am so relieved that you are not angry about the chapel and things. We can leave it all to you and we'll have the times of our lives. Billy Harvey says his ankles are getting stiff, it's been so long since he has fox-trotted. Do call Mammy or Sallie and let's look at your clothes." With which Letitia descended from her spiritual heights into the realm of the material and plunged with both Mammy and Sallie into a riot ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... putting forth two short twigs for every one cut off, it spreads out low along the ground in the hollows or between the rocks, growing more stout and scrubby, until it forms, not a tree as yet, but a little pyramidal, stiff, twiggy mass, almost as solid and impenetrable as a rock. Some of the densest and most impenetrable clumps of bushes that I have ever seen, as well on account of the closeness and stubbornness of their branches as of their thorns, have been these ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... and their lives threadbare:—-all but himself and organist Max, perhaps, and Fritz the treble-singer. In return, the people in actual contact with him thought him a little mad, though still ready to flatter his madness, as he could detect. Alone with the doating old grandfather in their stiff, distant, alien world of etiquette, he felt surrounded by flatterers, and would fain have tested the sincerity even of Max, and Fritz who said, echoing the words of the other, "Yourself, Sire, are the ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... which shocks your own. As for wheedling you into a liking of a work, I must confess it seems the safest way; but though flattery pleases you well when it is particular, you hate it, as little concerning you, when it is general. Then we knights of the quill are a stiff-necked generation, who as seldom care to seem to doubt the worth of our writings, and their being liked, as we love to flatter more than one at a time; and had rather draw our pens, and stand up for the beauty of our works (as some arrant fools use to do for that of their mistresses) ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... oh!" whispered Watson; "I am so cramped and stiff I don't know what will become of me. This is the most painful experience ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... did but glance a far-off look, Immediately he was upon his knee, That all the court admir'd him for submission; But meet him now, and be it in the morn When every one will give the time of day, He knits his brow, and shows an angry eye, And passeth by with stiff unbowed knee, Disdaining duty that to us belongs. Small curs are not regarded when they grin, But great men tremble when the lion roars; And Humphrey is no little man in England. First note that he is near you in descent, And should you fall, he is the next ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... the scene of the last evening's gambol, and if he met with any of the party, to demand his dog and gun. As he rose to walk, he found himself stiff in the joints, and wanting in his usual activity. "These mountain beds do not agree with me," thought Rip, "and if this frolic should lay me up with a fit of the rheumatism, I shall have a blessed time with Dame Van Winkle." With some difficulty ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... Ireland, thence from Mizen Head across to Land's End; up the English Channel and the North Sea, to her starting-point. The run down past the west coast of Ireland, and part of the way up the Channel, was accomplished in the face of a stiff south-westerly gale and through a very heavy sea, in which the little craft behaved magnificently, the entire trial, from first to last, being of the most thoroughly satisfactory character, and evoking ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... the bottom, and her morning had been a levee. Even poor little Mrs. Jardine, whose boy had been killed before he had been over two weeks, had spoken to Marjorie brightly, and said how glad she was, and silent, stiff Miss Gardner, who was said never to have had any lovers in her life, had looked at her with an envy she tried to hide, and said that she supposed Marjorie ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... in my judgment, this stranger hath been bred at the French court, and hath there learned politeness and grace of manner, which none understand so well as the nobility of France. That gait, now! A vulgar spectator might deem it stiff—he might call it a hitch and jerk—but, to my eye, it hath an unspeakable majesty, and must have been acquired by constant observation of the department of the Grand Monarque. The stranger's character and office are evident enough. He is a French Ambassador, come to treat with our rulers about ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... uttered no word. I wondered how soon I could decently take my leave, and I asked myself why on earth Mrs. Strickland had allowed me to come. There were no flowers, and various knick-knacks, put away during the summer, had not been replaced; there was something cheerless and stiff about the room which had always seemed so friendly; it gave you an odd feeling, as though someone were lying dead on the other side of the wall. ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham |
