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More "Bluntness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Dolores lacked diplomacy; her bluntness was often trying. Alaire turned upon her with a sharp exclamation, conscious meanwhile that the woman's tone, even more than her words, had enlightened Longorio to some extent. His lifted brows were eloquent of surprise and curiosity, ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... copiousness and easy vivacity of his talk, a certain purpose was never lost sight of in his remarks and illustrations."—Friedrich Carl Meyer.] who was at this time a man of fifty, was no ordinary character. He was sagacious, warm-hearted, honest, straightforward to bluntness, painstaking, just, benevolent to a remarkable degree; the friend of princes, without forfeiting his independence, he won and kept their perfect confidence to the end. He loved them heartily in return, without seeking ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... Slow to resolve, but in performance quick; So true, that he was awkward at a trick. For little souls on little shifts rely, And coward arts of mean expedients try; The noble mind will dare do anything but lie. False friends, his deadliest foes, could find no way But shows of honest bluntness, to betray: That unsuspected plainness he believed; He looked into himself, and was deceived. 930 Some lucky planet sure attends his birth, Or Heaven would make a miracle on earth; For prosperous honesty is seldom seen To bear so dead a weight, and ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... constitutional timidity seemed to be filled to the brim by the loudness of Allan's voice and the bluntness of Allan's request. He ran over in the same feeble flow of words with which he had deluged Midwinter on the ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... could not see her expression, but he had always been confident of his ability to talk himself out of trouble, so he rambled on in pretence of camaraderie, currying favour, as he believed, ingratiating himself with the coarse bluntness that served him among some men, even among ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... gesture, and the Gainer took a step forward. The light that fell back from his hooded face played curiously about his jewelled hand; as it rose from the gilded hilt, it could be seen that to remedy the bluntness of the thick fingers the nails had been allowed to grow very long, which gave it now, in its half-curve, the look of a claw, upon which the red ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... being planned. On the eve of his departure he had sent the following brilliant document to the Emperor-elect as a reply to an attempt to entrap him to Peking, a document the meaning of which was clear to every educated man. Its exquisite irony mixed with its bluntness told all that was necessary to tell—and forecasted the inevitable ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... a statesman; you have been a conspirator; you are a great nobleman, consequently you must know men; you reason, pardon my bluntness, as if you did not know them at all, or rather, your generous desires in my ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... the question entirely. The bluntness of it took her by surprise. Frank speech was not a characteristic of ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... on his chair, but at last, with his characteristic bluntness said, "Hanged if I know! They say that them that gits down doesn't very often git up again. Yet I know they ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... morning spoken out with a pitiless bluntness, which had made Philip unusually thoughtful. The very words the Queen had used haunted him—'tale-bearers, who had neither clean ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... To his courage, his energy and perseverance, his military contemporaries have borne unanimous testimony. They seem entirely to have comprehended a character which the unfortunate Charles Edward could never appreciate. They felt the justness of his ascendancy, and discriminated between the bluntness of an ardent and honest mind, careless of ordinary forms, and the arrogance of an inferior capacity. As a soldier, indeed, the qualities of Lord George Murray rose to greatness: so enduring, and so fearless, so careless of danger to himself, yet so solicitous for others. As a general, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... we might marry, you and I," he said, and cursed himself for the blundering bluntness of ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... "I admire your bluntness," remarked the former chairman across the table, "although I can't say as much for your philosophy. It is our duty to keep everybody contented; we cannot do any public weeding-out until the others are satisfied that the malcontents are ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... though his mother groans over his manners. Polish him up a bit, I beg of you, for it is high time he mended his odd ways and did justice to the fine gifts he hides behind them," said Uncle Mac, scandalized at the bluntness of his son. ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... privileged to observe him, he is as easy to understand as the multiplication table, as little devious and, alas! as lacking in suavity. Yet, let us be fair to George. Mere innocence of guile, of verbal trickery, had not alone sufficed for his passionate bluntness in the present crisis. At a later stage in his career as a husband he might have been equally blunt; yet never again, perhaps, would he have been so emotional in his opposition to woman polluting herself with the ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... scenes, Ruth could remember nothing in his manner but a sort of invigorating, friendly bluntness, totally at variance with the peculiarities of the "lady's man" that Louis had insinuated he was accounted. She resolved to scrutinize him more narrowly ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... for a moment. Unequivocal as the confession was, Miss Rebecca, reluctant to believe her ears, asked with characteristic bluntness: ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... do!" acknowledged the Senior Surgeon with equal bluntness. "But my little kiddie here loves you!" he hastened somewhat nervously to affirm. "Oh, I'm almost sure that my little kiddie here—loves you! She needs you anyway! Let it go at that! Call it that we ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... days my strength was restored. The cut I had received was not deep—thanks to my forage-cap and the bluntness of ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... a frown at her sister, and detached her eyes from her with an effort. "What did you say?" she demanded, with an absent bluntness. "Oh yes. Yes! We went once. Father took a box ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... bring me the weekly bills?" he said, with masculine bluntness, after he had been at Chiswick for ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... something different in the future, that it attracts us more than many forms of beauty. They have something of the merit of a rough sketch by a master, in which we pardon what is wanting or excessive for the sake of the very bluntness and directness of the thing. It gives us pleasure to see the beginning of gracious impulses and the springs of harmonious movement laid bare ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... answer this question with a bluntness that will end all honest misunderstanding ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... 'interviewer' open to you. I can scarcely imagine such work to be congenial to a lady's feelings, as, in the case of really distinguished personages, she must assuredly meet with many a rebuff! I hope I have not offended you by my bluntness, ... "— here he trailed off into inaudible polite murmurs, while the "Tiger-Lily" marched steadily ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... say anything by way of reply, two of them remarked sneeringly: "With all this doltish bluntness of his will he after all absorb himself in abstraction?" While Hsiang-yuen also clapped her hands and laughed, "Cousin Pao ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... look. The straight, rather salient nose had a perceptible cleft at the tip, which, I was told, was a sign of good lineage; muddy-mettled rascals lacked it; so that I was much distressed by the smooth, plebeian bluntness, at that time, of my own little snub. The mouth, then unshaded by a mustache, had a slight upward turn at the corners, indicative of vitality and good-humor; the chin rounded out sharply convex from the lip. The round, strong column of the neck well supported the head; my mother ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... somewhat irate, because the spectacle of the Weihaiwei regiment, six hundred yellow men under twelve white Englishmen, chasing malcontents in Shantung, is derogatory to Teutonic aspirations. Germany has earmarked Shantung, and it is just like English bluntness to remind the would-be dominant Power that there is a British sphere and a British colony in the Chinese province, as well as a German sphere and a German colony. But the German Minister, a beau garcon ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... discovered, may easily enough be confounded with the utter repudiation of it. Both forms of mind will discuss the same questions; both will discuss them freely, with a certain plainness and daring, which may range through all grades, from the bluntness of Socrates down to reckless immodesty and profaneness. The world will hardly distinguish between the two; it did not in Socrates' case, mistaking his reverent irreverence for Atheism, and martyred him accordingly, as it has since martyred Luther's memory. Probably, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... he confidently told himself, with that bluntness of thought which comes to us all at times. "See how she flared up because I danced with Helen. Maybe if ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... of her mother's bluntness of speech, explained that the creation in question had been Isabel's choice, and Rose smiled as one ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... is chilling and repulsive, the opposite habit of assenting to, and sympathizing with, every statement made, or emotion expressed, is almost equally disagreeable. It is unmanly, and is felt to be dishonest. "It may seem difficult," says Richard Sharp, "to steer always between bluntness and plain dealing, between merited praises and lavishing indiscriminate flattery; but it is very easy—good humor, kindheartedness, and perfect simplicity, being all that are requisite to do what is right ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... texture of her robes, and the musical tinkle of her voice. But Leonidas had no confidant, and what healthy boy ever trusted his sister in such matter! "YOU saw what she was like," he said, with evasive bluntness. ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... his cropped hair, her guest was a most attractive creature. Not that he could boast much in the way of regular good looks: the mouth was large, the nose of no particular outline, and in general the cutting of the face, though strong and characteristic, had a bluntness and naivete like a vigorous unfinished sketch. This bluntness of line, however, was balanced by a great delicacy of tint—the pink and white complexion of a girl, indeed—enhanced by the bright reddish hair, and quick ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... convey profound and condensed thought in a style that is at once clear and rich. His moral character was singularly mixed and complex, and bears no comparison with his intellect. It exhibits a singular coldness and lack of enthusiasm, and indeed a bluntness of moral perception and an absence of attractiveness rarely combined with such extraordinary mental endowments. All that was possible to be done in defence of his character and public conduct has been done by his accomplished biographer and editor, Mr. Spedding (q.v.). ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... Bland to Esterhaz to endeavour to persuade Haydn to alter his mind. Bland was shown into a room adjoining that in which Haydn happened to be shaving, and whilst seated there he overheard the composer growling to himself over the bluntness of his razors. At length Bland caught the exclamation, 'Ach! I would give my best quartet for a good razor!' and without more ado, he rushed off to his lodgings and returned in a few minutes with a pair of razors, which he presented to Haydn. The Capellmeister accepted the gift ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... the Major, "must pardon my bluntness. I am unable to hide what I know. For some time back I have suspected Major Hammersmith, but Mr. Godall is unmistakable. To seek two men in London unacquainted with Prince Florizel of Bohemia was to ask too ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... didn't tell any one of his marriage." The bluntness of the speech was relieved by the confidential manner in which Miss Hitchcock leaned forward to the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... forgive me what may seem to you a piece of rudeness, I declare that the poor man is ashamed of such things with the sensitiveness of a young girl. YOU, for instance, would not care (pray pardon my bluntness) to unrobe yourself before the public eye; and in the same way, the poor man does not like to be pried at or questioned concerning his family relations, and so forth. A man of honour and self-respect such as I am finds it painful and grievous to have to consort with men ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... to Brisbane for the substitute to be sent on the following day, and would be ready to start in twenty-four hours. After visiting Wandenong he would go to Brisbane for some scientific necessaries—and so on through smooth parentheses of talk. Under all the bluntness of the Bush young Osgood had a refinement which now found expression in an attempt to make himself agreeable—not a difficult task, since, thanks to his father's tastes and a year or two at college, he had a smattering of physical science. He soon won his way to the old man's heart, and to his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in character like other folk; but there is one trait they have in common; they are mightily inclined to be affable to men of very low estate. These do not vie with them in anything whatever, so jealousy cannot creep in; and they amuse them by their bluntness and novelty, and refresh the poor things with a touch of nature—a rarity in courts. So Philip the Good reined in his horse and gave Martin almost a tete-a-tete, and Martin reminded him of a certain battlefield where he had received an arrow intended for his sovereign. The duke ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the characteristic falsehood and deceit so generally experienced in the French. He could not be prevailed on, by his friends at Naples, to visit Admiral Blanquet, who had his nose shot off, and was otherwise dreadfully wounded in the face. On this occasion, he seems to have adopted all the rough bluntness of a British tar. He had beaten him, he said, and would not insult him. "Seeing me," added the hero, "will only put him in mind of his misfortune. I have an antipathy to Frenchmen; which is so powerful, that I must, I think, have received it from ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... so pleasant to feel, but, in return, the legend is so visible, that, at the first look, you can see whose image and superscription they bear." This is a delicate way of setting forth the superior honesty and bluntness and the inferior smoothness and assimilating instinct of the Anglo-Saxon,—a vital difference, which no alliance or intercourse with his Gallic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... in you, even if I don't care a fig for your music," Phebe answered, with a bluntness that should have been death ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... feature about the sperm whale is the bluntness of its clumsy head, which looks somewhat like a big log with the end sawn square off, and this head is about one-third ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... at his bluntness. "I heard something about it, sir. Perhaps Mr. Lawrence was a little wild. It sometimes happens ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... was taken back as much by the bluntness of the remarks as if they had been doused with cold water. Indignation was everywhere visible on the countenances of the people. But Mr. Washington appeared unruffled. On the contrary, his heavy jaw was hard set and his eyes danced in a merry measure. It was a time to keep one's ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... embarrassed the beholder. All men had liked him, and spoken well of him throughout his long and hard-worked career. Thorpe was very fond of him indeed, and put a respectful cordiality into his grasp of the proffered hand. Then he looked, with a certain thinly-veiled bluntness of enquiry, past the Marquis ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... almost happy, but their occupation humiliated them since they had begun to set a higher value on themselves, and their disgust increased while they were mutually glorifying and spoiling each other. Pecuchet contracted Bouvard's bluntness, and Bouvard assumed a little ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... philosophy, a defiant humor, an enforced medium temperature of soul. The Englishman is no more given to extremes than is his climate; against its damp and perpetual changes he has become coated with a sort of bluntness. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... ground on which to stand, she was building up an ideal of her sister—and these women jarred on that. They came to her direct from a world, her sister's world, which she now vaguely felt to be cheap, shallow, disillusioning. And she needed her illusions. By nature frank to bluntness, she was not good at hiding dislikes; and her uneasy visitors soon realized with relief that they were not ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... subjected to strain, he was not one to be lightly dealt with by man or woman. He was gentle, soft, if you please, childlike with those he loved, but there was dangerous mettle in him not to be tampered with by trickery or guile. Christopher had shown me with his uncompromising bluntness what I had merely suspected; the girl loved danger and saw it in Jerry's eyes, fascinated by the imminence of peril that lurked in his innocence. A strange passion, calculating, cold, abnormal. And Jerry loved this girl—adored her, ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... men, and inclined on all occasions to take the advice of designing knaves who flattered and paid deference to him, rather than that of the Scottish nobles who were risking their lives for his cause, but who at times gave their advice with a bluntness and warmth which were displeasing to him. It was this weakness which brought an enterprise, which at one time had the fairest prospect of success, to ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... man would have offended me. This man blushed like a boy, and looked at the pavement instead of looking at me. By this time I had made up my mind about him. He was not only a gentleman beyond all doubt, but a shy gentleman as well. His bluntness and his odd remarks were, as I thought, partly efforts to disguise his shyness, and partly refuges in which he tried to forget his own sense of it. I answered his audacious proposal amiably and pleasantly. "You would only ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... affection. That could not be allowed to pass; the error must be rectified. And yet! . . . And yet this very error must be cleared up before she could make her full wish apparent. She seemed to find herself compelled by inexorable circumstances into an unlooked-for bluntness. In any case she must face the situation. Her pluck did not fail her; it was with a very noble and graceful simplicity that she turned to ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... motion. The ideal of the face is often solemn—seldom beautiful; occasionally ludicrous failures occur: in the smallest designs the face is very often a dead letter, or worse: and in all, Giotto's handling is generally to be distinguished from that of any of his followers by its bluntness. In the school work we find sweeter types of feature, greater finish, stricter care, more delicate outline, fewer errors, but on the ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... sung it," returned Tom with unexpected bluntness. "I went through such a long, dreary winter before my Golden Summer came. Now I wish it to stay with me forever. I'd like our lives from this moment on always to be one long, continued Golden Summer like the last two weeks. I can't ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... the surgeons, two of them departed aboard the tug, the third remaining to care for the patient. Hank, despite all his bluntness of manner, was proving himself valuable in the sick-room, while Joe spent most of his time in the wireless room of the bungalow, waiting to receive or send any word. So, as evening came, Tom Halstead bestirred himself with the ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... spoke in that tone of disdainful bluntness which she almost always used when speaking to the Irishman, Felicia was at work on the bust of the Nabob which she had just commenced, posing her model, laying down and taking up the boasting-tool, quickly wiping her fingers with the little sponge, while the light and peace of ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... said Achilles; "that you came to take the parting orders of him who now acts the sovereign. Surely, had I seen you there, with that steadfast, open, seemingly honest countenance, cheating the wily Greek by very dint of bluntness, I had not forborne laughing at the contrast between that and ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... attempt at eloquence or self-assertion in Allingford's remarks; brief they were almost to bluntness, but well suited to the audience to whom they were addressed. It was the old, well-tried captain of Ronleigh who spoke, and the boys of Ronleigh who listened, and the manner in which the words were given and received might have reminded one of a speech of ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... and the sudden quiver of the under lip, when allusion was made to the eight of whom the family had once consisted: and Phoebe's deduction was, not that Jane Talbot bore no burden, but that she kept it out of sight. Perhaps that very characteristic bluntness of her manner denoted a tight curb kept upon ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... Mizora people. They detected odors so refined that I was not aware of them. I have often seen a chemist take a bottle of perfumery and name its ingredients from the sense of smell only. No one appeared surprised at the bluntness of my senses. When I spoke of this ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... some fellow Who, having been prais'd for bluntness, doth affect A saucy roughness, and constrains the garb Quite from his nature: he cannot flatter, he,— An honest mind and plain,—he must speak truth! An they will take it, so; if not, he's plain. These kind of ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... have disturbed you, Mrs. Merrydew," he said, with a gentle bluntness, "if I hadn't wanted to ask your advice before I saw Reddy. I'm keeping out of his way until I could see you. I left Nelly and her mother in 'Frisco. There's been some queer goings-on on the steamer coming home; ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... he read and re-read this brief epistle, "she does not despise my love, but she recognizes its hopelessness." With the usual bluntness of masculine perception he failed to see that it was impossible for her to ignore what he himself was accustomed to dwell upon at such dreary length. If he was profoundly convinced that there was no hope, she could scarcely condescend to suggest that there might be a glimmer. So the young man continued ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... resignedly and as a matter of course. Naturally slow in capacity, he had the bluntness of sensibility and phlegmatic patience of disposition which frequently distinguish men with sluggishly-working mental powers. He thanked the gentleman's steward with his usual quiet civility for granting him an interview, and took his departure with no appearance of unusual depression ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... chiefly with regard to two points. First, the awkwardness of the handle, which causes the glaziers here to use the tool bound round with wadding, or enclosed in a bit of india-rubber pipe; and, secondly, the bluntness of the "jaws" which hold the wheel, and which must be ground down (and are in universal practice ground down), before the ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... something forlorn in the man's attitude, and Cavanagh's heart softened. "Turn your horse into the corral and come to supper," he commanded, with Western bluntness; "we'll talk ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... the way her uncle acted while he listened—and afterward. He talked a good deal about Gale and the way she was treating her cousin. When Nan declared she never would have anything to do with him, her uncle told her with disconcerting bluntness to get all that out of her head, for she was going to marry him. When she protested she never would, Duke told her, with many harsh oaths, that she should never marry de Spain even if he had to kill him or get ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... do service where it owes an obligation! In the disguise of a serving-man, all his greatness and pomp laid aside, this good earl proffered his services to the king, who not knowing him to be Kent in that disguise, but pleased with a certain plainness, or rather bluntness in his answers which the earl put on (so different from that smooth oily flattery which he had so much reason to be sick of, having found the effects not answerable in his daughter), a bargain was quickly struck, ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Sue's tone that her new and transcendental views lurked in her words; but all except their obvious meaning was, naturally, missed by Arabella. The latter, after evincing that she was struck by Sue's avowal, recovered herself, and went on to talk with placid bluntness about "her" boy, for whom, though in his lifetime she had shown no care at all, she now exhibited a ceremonial mournfulness that was apparently sustaining to the conscience. She alluded to the past, and in making some ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... of the host during the course of the story had not quite prepared him against the bluntness of this announcement, and his surprise vented itself in a sudden start. But immediately recovering his poise, he spoke ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... towards the road. They went to court about it, and he was called to account by the usual process of law. The plain, gruff old farmer, who seems all along to have been a man of strong sense and decided character, filed an answer, which is unsurpassed for bluntness of expression. It has no language of ceremony, but goes to the point at once. It has a general interest as showing, to how late a period the inhabitants of this neighborhood were exposed to Indian attacks, and what means of defence were resorted to by the Village worshippers. The document manifests ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... of these, is upon the whole very innocent: the longing for the enjoyment of domestic joys, so often interrupted by the absence of the husbands, is to be the means of putting an end to the calamitous war by which Greece had so long been torn in pieces. In particular, the honest bluntness of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... consulting his watch with Neale's bluntness in such matters. "Train's due in a minute or two," he said. ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... Constantine's dethronement was decreed, not because it was lawful, but because France required it, and England, for good reasons, could not let France bring it about alone: what Russia thought of the transaction, she soon let the whole world know with disconcerting bluntness. Petrograd not only withdrew her troops from the performance, but made short work of the "guarantee" and "protection" quibbles by roundly declaring that "the choice of the form of government in Greece, as well as its administrative organization, ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... were in dreamland, Miss Barrett was keenly susceptible to the strong humanity of Browning's song, nor less keenly attracted by his strenuous and fearless outlook, his poetic practicality, and even by his bluntness of insight in certain matters. It was no slight thing to her that she could, in Mr. Lowell's words, say of herself and ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... however, there can be no doubt that personal odor tends to play a not inconsiderable part in sexual attractions and sexual repulsions. As a sexual excitant, indeed, it comes far behind the stimuli received through the sense of sight. The comparative bluntness of the sense of smell in man makes it difficult for olfactory influence to be felt, as a rule, until the preliminaries of courtship are already over; so that it is impossible for smell ever to possess the same significance in sexual attraction in man ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... company of de Spain's early associates for the event. It included Whispering Smith, whose visit to Sleepy Cat on this occasion was the first in years; George McCloud, who had come all the way from Omaha to join his early comrades in arms; Wickwire, who had lost none of his taciturn bluntness—and so many train-despatchers that the service on the division was crippled ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... nothing, but it occurred to the mountaineer, just as he was counting money from a stuffed purse, that it would perhaps be wiser to wait and consult Lescott in matters of sartorial selection. So, with incisive bluntness, he countermanded his order—and made an enemy. The shopkeeper, standing at the door of his basement establishment, combed his beard with his fingers, and thought regretfully of the fat wallet; and, a minute after, when two policemen came by, walking together, ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... I have no inclination that way. I am willing to be friends with everybody, and nothing more with anybody." The sentences came with the cruel detachment of bullets; but, "Not again, not twice," was his uppermost thought. Any bluntness, any ruggedness, rather than another month like that of ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... said Bess, but the words were not ungently spoken, notwithstanding their bluntness. "Dunnot let us mak' it worse than it need be. Seth, lad, ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... in time to hear his father's blundering, and, in his jovial humour, in his delight over the new conception of his father that he had acquired after the toast, he said, with a cheery bluntness: ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... Doa[u]b, who accordingly came out to welcome us to his territory; he embraced us in the Uzbeg fashion, telling us in eastern phraseology "to consider his dominion as our own, and that we might command all he possessed." After many compliments of this nature, he inquired with some bluntness whither we were bound and what our object was? We answered him, that we were proceeding to Koollum, and were anxious to get as much information as he would be good enough to afford us concerning so beautiful a portion of the globe, and we wished to survey its particular ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... in cigarette stains; his velvet jacket and his crimson sash; the many-flounced skirt and lace manta of his women, and their caressing intonations—the one musical utterance of the whole hard-voiced city. I suppose I had a boy's digestion and bluntness of taste in those days, for the combined odor of tobacco, burned paper, and garlic, which marked that melodious breath, did ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... about her. She'd come out all right if left alone. It was Mrs. Cranston and Miss Loomis to whom he delivered himself of the last mentioned. He liked them both, which was more than he did most people, for this AEsculapian countryman of Carlyle had much of that eminent writer's sharpness of vision and bluntness of speech together with even more of his contempt for the bulk of his fellow-men. "No, Mrs. Cranston," said he, "don't wait a day for her. Start just as soon as you are ready, and don't give a thought to this little flibberty ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... in the passages when I was dressed as a boy. Though he complimented me on my self-denial in making what he called "some sacrifice of beauty" to pass for a boy, "so that the audience can't say, 'Why, James must be a fool not to see she is a girl,'" he scolded me for my want of bluntness. ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... she don't weigh very heavy," said Jerry, in a shamefaced bluntness, as if he wronged the absent goddess through such crudities. "You can't seem to see anybody that's had the thoughts she has and the way she's got of putting 'em—you can't see 'em very big-framed or heavy, ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... difference of styles. Had I been to have told my thoughts on this occasion; instead of saying how Mr. H[arle]y was "treated by some persons," and "preserved from some unparalleled attempts"; I should with intolerable bluntness and ill manners, have told a formal story, of a com[mitt]ee[6] sent to a condemned criminal in Newgate, to bribe him with a pardon, on condition he would swear high treason against his master, who discovered ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... doubted. Olivares said to Buckingham, "You gave me some assurance and hope of the prince's turning catholic." The duke roundly answered that it was false. The Spanish minister, confounded at the bluntness of our English duke, broke from him in a violent rage, and lamented that state matters would not suffer him to do himself justice. This insult was never forgiven; and some time afterwards he attempted to revenge himself on Buckingham, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... a quaint turn of old English speech or by the force of its delight in rude bodily skill—for Davin had sat at the feet of Michael Cusack, the Gael—repelling swiftly and suddenly by a grossness of intelligence or by a bluntness of feeling or by a dull stare of terror in the eyes, the terror of soul of a starving Irish village in which the curfew was still ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... cannot "size up" so readily. He never saw the like of us before, and we are beyond his Teutonic frontier-like comprehension. He gives us up; he fails to solve the puzzle; he knows not how to unravel the mystery; and, with characteristic Teutonic bluntness, he advises us to push on through fifteen miles of rocks, sand, and darkness, to Wadsworth. The prospect of worrying my way, hungry and weary, through fifteen miles of rough, unknown country, after ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... others, who were too far behind to hear them. Lisle looked at his companion steadily. The man was engaged in a business that was regarded with general disfavor, but there was something he liked about him and he did not resent his bluntness. ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... adhered to it; and he was at no loss in clubs and other assemblies to overbear and silence, if not to confute, his censurers. Beside which, Hawkins had certain accomplishments which qualified him to be a favourite with Mr. Tyrrel. The bluntness of his manner and the ruggedness of his temper gave him some resemblance to his landord; and, as these qualities were likely to be more frequently exercised on such persons as had incurred Mr. Tyrrel's displeasure, than upon Mr. Tyrrel ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... with the young man's bluntness; she had no right to hold herself aloof from Mrs. Duncan's nephew. He must know how she had avoided him all these months, but he seemed too good-humored to resent it. He talked to her very pleasantly about the weather and the falls and ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... was a little shocked at her friend's bluntness, a little puzzled as to what lay behind her arguments. "You don't have to be a hungry spinster. There are other men besides Herbert that want to ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... on going again to the same place, and again she was obviously on the look-out. Horace grew more and more puzzled by her demeanour. And when the third day came, and once more Mrs. Errington called him to set forth to the Serpentine, he said to her, with a boy's bluntness—— ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... way. I know you are wrong, just as certainly as the people who believed the sun moved round the earth. The trouble is that I know it only with the same cold mental conviction, and therefore can be of no help to either of you. Pardon me for my bluntness: do you expect to marry Grace, should she become ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... we mean to speak with the bluntness and decision demanded by the circumstances. A committee of men, mature in years and solid in judgment, some of whom we can name, must be put in control of the campaign. Mr. Grayson must be kept within strict limits; he must take advice before delivering his speeches, and he must not be permitted ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... — N. bluntness &c adj.. V. be blunt, render blunt &c adj.; obtund^, dull; take off the point, take off the edge; turn. Adj. blunt, obtuse, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... coarseness and bluntness of her thoughts and the vulgarity of the expressions that were natural to her, though she had been brought up in ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the least—more likely six weeks," she said with kind bluntness. It was best he should ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... negotiator. Perhaps no other course could have been more effectual in securing success than this obvious indifference to it. In the prevalent condition of public feeling and of his own sentiments Mr. Adams easily assumed towards General Vives a decisive bluntness, not altogether consonant to the habits of diplomacy, and manifested an unchangeable stubbornness which left no room for discussion. His position was simply that Spain might make such a treaty as the United States demanded, or might take (p. 124) the consequences of her ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... the horror of youth at seeing its shy fastnesses of reserve laid open to indifferent feet. Divining, however, through his affection for her, that she was really more than pleasantly startled by his bluntness, he began to make everything smooth by saying: "There aren't many girls in Endbury who don't envy my little Lydia, I ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... with an air of dignity far superior to his usual bluntness and even rudeness of address, he slowly departed. Thoughts crowded, like a honey swarm, to this hive of mystery, nor could she throw off the impression which clung to her. She had been warned against revealing this communication, but at one time she ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... said, "I like your courage, your truth, and your bluntness. You Texans, or rather you Americans,—because the Texans are Americans,—have some of the ruder virtues which we who are of the Spanish and Latin blood now and then lack. You are only a boy, but you have in you the qualities that can make a career. The Texans belong ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... replied with the greatest good humor, "No, Mr. Dean; I will sing for you now, if you please." From this time he conceived the greatest esteem for her, and always behaved with the utmost respect. Those who knew Swift, took no offence at his bluntness of behavior. It seems Queen Caroline did not, if we may credit his words in the verses on his ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... with entire sincerity,—I said,—always feels himself in danger of two things, namely,—an affectation of bluntness, like that of which Cornwall accuses Kent in "Lear," and actual rudeness. What a man wants to do, in talking with a stranger, is to get and to give as much of the best and most real life that belongs to the two ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... bluntness, not hitherto used in American communications with the belligerents, marked this note of protest to Austria-Hungary. Demands were made for a denunciation of the submarine commander's act as "illegal and indefensible," for his punishment, and for reparation ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... impossible after these months of hopeless want to smell the rough, high-spiced sea victuals without lust, and his mouth watered with desire of the champagne. It was no less impossible to have assisted at the scene between Huish and the captain, and not to perceive, with sudden bluntness, the gulf where he had fallen. He was a thief among thieves. He said it to himself. He could not touch the soup. If he had moved at all, it must have been to leave the table, throw himself ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... whose happiest experiences were in dreamland, Miss Barrett was keenly susceptible to the strong humanity of Browning's song, nor less keenly attracted by his strenuous and fearless outlook, his poetic practicality, and even by his bluntness of insight in certain matters. It was no slight thing to her that she could, in Mr. Lowell's words, say of herself and ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... expressed himself as "eager to be carefully and categorically questioned." This Report appears subsequently to have been withdrawn, probably on the advice of Borrow's friends, who saw that its uncompromising bluntness of expression would make it unacceptable to the General Committee. It was certainly presented to and considered by the Sub-Committee. Another document was drawn up entitled, "Report of Mr Geo. Borrow on Past and Future Operations ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... "must pardon my bluntness. I am unable to hide what I know. For some time back I have suspected Major Hammersmith, but Mr. Godall is unmistakable. To seek two men in London unacquainted with Prince Florizel of Bohemia was to ask too ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... other things, the professor was the precise opposite of the diplomatist. Cutter affected an air of sublime simplicity, and cultivated a straightforward bluntness of expression which was not without weight. He prided himself on saying at once that he either had an opinion upon a subject, or had none; and if he chanced to have formed any judgment he was hot in its support. His intellect was really profound ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... of contradictions, or in acute nonsense: sometimes a scenical representation of persons or things, a counterfeit speech, a mimical look or gesture, passeth for it: sometimes an affected simplicity, sometimes a presumptuous bluntness giveth it being: sometimes it riseth only from a lucky hitting upon what is strange: sometimes from a crafty wresting obvious matter to the purpose. Often it consisteth in one knows not what, and springeth up one can hardly tell ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... from London, and to which he returned a few months later restored for the time. Shortly after his recovery he undertook to throw up one of the windows of the lodge, but found it nailed down. He asked the cause, and was told, with inconsiderate bluntness, that it had been done during his illness to prevent his doing himself an injury. The perfect calmness and silence with which he received this explanation was a sufficient ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... quite the man your grandfather was, Mr. Glenarm. You’ll excuse my bluntness, but I take it that you’re a frank man. He was a very keen person, and, I’m afraid,”—he chuckled with evident satisfaction to himself,—”I’m really afraid, Mr. Glenarm, that ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... pretend?" asked Napoleon, who was always delighted at the unceremonious words of his old comrade, and who permitted to Lannes that bluntness which he would not have tolerated ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... "your trans-Atlantic bluntness is somewhat disconcerting. However, you must admit that we have heard you patiently. Let us now, if you are willing, discuss for a minute or two the ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... your clothes at the windows in Doom?" asked her master quietly, with none of a master's bluntness, asking the question in English from politeness to ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... you," he said, "I like your courage, your truth, and your bluntness. You Texans, or rather you Americans,—because the Texans are Americans,—have some of the ruder virtues which we who are of the Spanish and Latin blood now and then lack. You are only a boy, but you have in you the qualities that can make a career. The Texans belong to Mexico. ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and three weeks," said Billy, remembering something, "the difference is sometimes no greater than between Tweedledum and Tweedledee." He smiled humorously at the other young man, a frank, likeable smile that softened magically the bluntness of his young mouth. "That's why I came to you. You are the only soul I know to be interested in Miss Beecher's welfare. The Evershams are off up the Nile—and they'd probably be helpless, anyway. Besides, you know more about ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... took the door-handle out of her hand and closed the door, and said, with only the boundless tenderness of his moist eyes to mend the bluntness of the words— ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... expect you hear about all they is goin' on in this neighborhood," replied Mrs. Ripley with crushing bluntness; but the gossip ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... in all these tales, and the same optimistic delusion regarding "the people" for which the eighteenth century paid so dearly. The painters likewise caught the tendency, and with the same thorough-going conscientiousness as their brethren of the quill, disguised coarseness as strength, bluntness as honesty, churlishness as dignity. What an idyllic sweetness there is, for instance, in Tidemand's scenes of Norwegian peasant life! What a spirituelle and movingly sentimental note in the corresponding German scenes of Knaus and Huebner, and, longo intervallo, Meyerheim ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... belong; but their physiognomy seemed to me to be slightly different from that of any other tribe which I had before seen. Their expression is generally grave, and even austere, and possesses much character: this may pass either for honest bluntness or fierce determination. The long black hair, the grave and much-lined features, and the dark complexion, called to my mind old portraits of James I. On the road we met with none of that humble politeness so universal in Chiloe. Some gave their "mari-mari" (good ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Mr. Bashwood's constitutional timidity seemed to be filled to the brim by the loudness of Allan's voice and the bluntness of Allan's request. He ran over in the same feeble flow of words with which he had deluged Midwinter on the occasion ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... him with a smile in his eyes. "Some men might think you were afraid of that bunch," he observed with characteristic bluntness. "I know you aren't, and so I don't see why you want me to be. You know, and I know, that the Vigilance Committee has turned rotten to the core; every decent man in San Francisco knows it. You know that Sandy killed that Spaniard in self-defense—or if you didn't ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... violet shadow of his square hut inside the compound, squatted Zalu Zako. The lips and nose were nearer to the Aryan delicacy than the negroid bluntness; for the Wongolo, like the Wahima, are a mixed Bantu-Somali race. In colour his skin had the red of bronze rather than the blue of the negro, and the planes of his moulded chest were as light as the worn ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... absolutely no notice of her. Walking on as though she were not there, he came straight up to me. He spoke in tones of intense emotion, and with the bluntness that ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... in Madrid. I was told, however, that he was taking his siesta. "Then I had better take my own," said I, and returned to the posada. In the evening I went again, when I saw him. He was a short bulky man about thirty, and received me at first with some degree of bluntness; his manner, however, presently became more kind, and at last he scarcely appeared to know how to show me sufficient civility. His brother had just arrived from Santander, and to him he introduced me. This last was a highly-intelligent person, and had passed many years ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... far beyond all these, he proclaims that "heaven is bright." But Gaspar, and such other landscapists, painting all Nature's flowery ground as one barrenness, and all her fair foliage as one blackness, and all her exquisite forms as one bluntness; when, in this sluggard gloom and sullen treachery of heart, they mutter their miserable attestation to what others had long ago discerned for them,—the sky's brightness,—we do not thank them; ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... adventure of Gigi and the Hunchback,—that was the most exciting of all. And how near they came to losing the bag of silver which they had earned by selling their vegetables at the market! Giuseppe asked Gigi many questions, not unkindly, but with a bluntness that made the boy wince. And often Mother Margherita spoke up for him, with a kind answer. Gigi grew paler and paler, and his food lay almost untouched on his plate. He was too ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... am interested in you, even if I don't care a fig for your music," Phebe answered, with a bluntness that should have ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... speak with the bluntness and decision demanded by the circumstances. A committee of men, mature in years and solid in judgment, some of whom we can name, must be put in control of the campaign. Mr. Grayson must be kept within strict limits; he must take advice before ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... kind, frank, yet withal so eccentric, and, as it would seem, so unconsciously humorous in the worthy father's manner, that the stranger, whilst he felt embarrassed by the good-natured bluntness of his interrogations, could not help experiencing a sensation that was equally novel and delightful, arising as it did from the candor and honesty of purpose that were so evident in all the ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... now, frankly consulting his watch with Neale's bluntness in such matters. "Train's due in a minute or two," he said. ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... and yet thousands had been made to believe that Mr. Seward made the existence of the Union depend on the abolition of slavery. Mr Lincoln had announced the same doctrine in advance of Mr. Seward, with a directness and bluntness which could not be found in the more polished phrase of the New-York senator. Despite these facts, a large number of delegates from doubtful States—delegates who held the control of the convention —supported Mr. Lincoln, on the distinct ground that the anti- slavery ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... publish her life, he turned like a wild beast upon the "blackguards" who "thrust their paws into his bowels" by prying into his intimacies. To the last he dismissed similar proposals by critics of the highest status with a cavalier bluntness highly surprising to persons who only knew him as the man of punctilious observance and fastidious good form. For the rest, London contained much that was bound by degrees to temper the gloom and assuage the hostility. ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... tending, however, to an indolent conservatism. Despite his convivial qualities, he had traits of the reserved, even of the unsociable, man: a slight awkwardness in bearing, a mute shyness with strangers, a hesitancy in ordinary talk, and occasional bluntness of assertion or contradiction, suggesting a contempt which possibly he did not intend. Hugh Carnaby declared that the true Rolfe only showed himself after a bottle of wine; maintained, moreover, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... lurked in her words; but all except their obvious meaning was, naturally, missed by Arabella. The latter, after evincing that she was struck by Sue's avowal, recovered herself, and went on to talk with placid bluntness about "her" boy, for whom, though in his lifetime she had shown no care at all, she now exhibited a ceremonial mournfulness that was apparently sustaining to the conscience. She alluded to the past, and in making some remark ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... of it?" Fred demanded with brotherly bluntness. "It takes a woman, by thunder, to knife her friends in the back. What are you trying to build up anyway? Take it from me, old girl, you want to cut out this picking away at Marion behind her back—or to her face, either, for that matter. You two women are going to see ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... is one to be handled with care. Those favoured with acquaintance of the honoured bushi often part with life and company at the same date. Those without lords are equally testy as those in quarters." He spoke with the bluntness of the true Edokko, the peculiar product of the capital; men who were neither farmers nor provincials, but true descendants of the men of the guild of Bandzuin Cho[u]bei. He jested, but the subject interested the crowd. Said one—"Does Cho[u]bei San get the ryo[u] out of ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... awkward at a trick. For little souls on little shifts rely, And coward arts of mean expedients try; The noble mind will dare do anything but lie. False friends, his deadliest foes, could find no way But shows of honest bluntness, to betray: That unsuspected plainness he believed; He looked into himself, and was deceived. 930 Some lucky planet sure attends his birth, Or Heaven would make a miracle on earth; For prosperous honesty is seldom seen To bear so dead a weight, and yet to win. It looks as fate with nature's law ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... have been a statesman; you have been a conspirator; you are a great nobleman, consequently you must know men; you reason, pardon my bluntness, as if you did not know them at all, or rather, your generous desires in my ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... see how she would take it. There was not the first twinkle of a simper about eye or lip. Surprised, but quite gravely, she looked up, and met his odd bluntness with as quaint an honesty of her own. "I was pretty sure of it a while ago," she said. "And perhaps I was, in a demoralized sort of a way. But I've come down, Mr. Wharne,—like the coon. I'll tell you presently," she went on,—and she ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the master of the Polly was not sure of his ground. He knew that Captain Lougee had qualified as father of five. In the judgment of a mariner experience counts. And he did not resent the manner of Captain Lougee because that skipper's brutal bluntness was well known by his friends. Captain Candage had asked and he had received. He rested his elbows on his knees and stared after ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... just in time to hear his father's blundering, and, in his jovial humour, in his delight over the new conception of his father that he had acquired after the toast, he said, with a cheery bluntness: ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... Pao-yue could not, say anything by way of reply, two of them remarked sneeringly: "With all this doltish bluntness of his will he after all absorb himself in abstraction?" While Hsiang-yuen also clapped her hands and laughed, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... without demur and bidden the landlady farewell, who displayed the same kind of indifferent bluntness which she had manifested the day before, I set off in the direction of the east, intending that my next stage should be Bala. Passing through a tollgate I found myself in a kind of suburb consisting of a few cottages. Struck ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... greatest good humor, "No, Mr. Dean; I will sing for you now, if you please." From this time he conceived the greatest esteem for her, and always behaved with the utmost respect. Those who knew Swift, took no offence at his bluntness of behavior. It seems Queen Caroline did not, if we may credit his words in the verses ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... Hazel neglected the question entirely. The bluntness of it took her by surprise. Frank speech was not a characteristic of Vesta ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... to drinking-songs are some comic ditties which may have been sung at wine-parties. Of these I have thought it worth while to present a few specimens, though their medieval bluntness of humour does not render them particularly ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... his own—all plain, homebred, and unaffected. His very faults smack of the raciness of his good qualities. His extravagance savors of his generosity, his quarrelsomeness of his courage, his credulity of his open faith, his vanity of his pride, and his bluntness of his sincerity. They are all the redundancies of a rich and liberal character. He is like his own oak, rough without, but sound and solid within; whose bark abounds with excrescences in proportion to the growth and grandeur ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... less respectfully. William thought him a busybody who had been properly punished for running into danger without any call of duty, and expressed that feeling, with characteristic bluntness, on the field of battle. "Sir," said an attendant, "the Bishop of Derry has been killed by a shot at the ford." "What took him there?" ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... her lips, her bright tender eyes, the angelic texture of her robes, and the musical tinkle of her voice. But Leonidas had no confidant, and what healthy boy ever trusted his sister in such matter! "YOU saw what she was like," he said, with evasive bluntness. ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... a straightforward rectitude in Dr. Beswick that inclined Phillida to forgive his bluntness of utterance and lack of manner. Here at least was no managing of a patient to get money, after the manner hinted at by Miss Bowyer. The distinction between diseases that might and those that might not be cured or mitigated by a faith-process, which Phillida detected in the doctor's ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... his country bluntness, but did not take the tribute amiss. "Not so rich—not so mighty rich. But enough, enough! If Ian here behaves himself he'll have enough!" A master workman called him away. He went with a large wave of the hand. "Make yourself at home, Alexander! ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... know he has rather a blunt way of saying things, but that very bluntness often places thoughts much more distinctly before us—Paul was speaking of her; he did not suspect anything; if he had, he is good-natured, he would not have spoken thus—well, he ...
— L'Abbe Constantin, Complete • Ludovic Halevy
... a doctrine leading to the disorganization of the community wherever it is acted upon. It is solely upon this ground that these letters have any claim to attention. Dr. James Johnson, of London, has, since my last letter, publicly contradicted, with all the bluntness and energy of honest conviction, the statement by Sir Gilbert Blane, Drs. Macmichael, Hawkins, &c., as to the importation of the cholera into the Mauritius by the Topaze frigate; but evidence is what people want on these occasions, and, relative to the case in question, probably ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... of the surgeons, two of them departed aboard the tug, the third remaining to care for the patient. Hank, despite all his bluntness of manner, was proving himself valuable in the sick-room, while Joe spent most of his time in the wireless room of the bungalow, waiting to receive or send any word. So, as evening came, Tom Halstead bestirred himself with the preparation of ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... perplexities over here, and chiefly with regard to two points. First, the awkwardness of the handle, which causes the glaziers here to use the tool bound round with wadding, or enclosed in a bit of india-rubber pipe; and, secondly, the bluntness of the "jaws" which hold the wheel, and which must be ground down (and are in universal practice ground down), before the tool can ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... Bilberry, Treachery Bindweed, Great Insinuation Bindweed, Small, Humility Birch, Meekness Bittersweet, Truth Blackthorn, Difficulty Bladder Nut Tree, Amusement Bluebell, Sorrowful Regret Bonus Henricus, Goodness Borage, Bluntness Box Tree, Stoicism Bramble, Lowliness Broom, Neatness Buckbean, Calm repose Buglos, Falsehood Bulrush, Indiscretion Bundle of Reeds, Music Burdock, Touch me not Bur, You weary me Buttercup, Childishness Butterfly Orchis, Gaiety Butterfly Weed, Let me go Cabbage, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... mother groans over his manners. Polish him up a bit, I beg of you, for it is high time he mended his odd ways and did justice to the fine gifts he hides behind them," said Uncle Mac, scandalized at the bluntness of his son. ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... very morning spoken out with a pitiless bluntness, which had made Philip unusually thoughtful. The very words the Queen had used haunted him—'tale-bearers, who had neither clean hearts nor ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... reputation for bluntness, it was remarkable how her force of character made her always called for whenever there was the least dread of ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... with Colonel Lewis and I wished to see you and Patsy before going back," I explained. I had looked for bluntness in his greeting, but I had expected to ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... wondered the direct attack had not come sooner. Its bluntness hardly surprised him. He felt himself leap forward to accept it. A sudden ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... husband was married before, just as he said he was." But she said nothing more, and went home. There she put it to Di, and with her terrible bluntness reviewed to ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... frown crossed Carey's face; then he, too, smiled. He was finding it hard to take offense at the gambler's bluntness. ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... giving the European Concert a lesson in the policy of energy. She displays as much bluntness in her sudden claims as she displayed skill in having the Concert brought to ridicule by Turkey. Haiti and China have yielded on the spot to her direct threats. If they reflect, will not the Powers of the Concert realise that Germany's ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... Patty, and I apologise. I can't seem to get over my Western bluntness. And, Little Girl, I don't blame you a bit if you do care for him. He's a good-looking chap, and ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... counterbalance of dry philosophy, a defiant humor, an enforced medium temperature of soul. The Englishman is no more given to extremes than is his climate; against its damp and perpetual changes he has become coated with a sort of bluntness. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... take energetic measures to protect herself from them; and as to Calais, the possession of a fishing town on a foreign coast was of no moment to her in comparison with the peace and security of her own realm. This answer did not tend to close the breach. Besides the bluntness of the refusal of their offer, the French were irritated and vexed to hear their famous sea-port ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... mean by "vulgarity"? You will find it a fruitful subject of thought; but, briefly, the essence of all vulgarity lies in want of sensation. Simple and innocent vulgarity is merely an untrained and undeveloped bluntness of body and mind; but in true inbred vulgarity, there is a deathful callousness, which, in extremity, becomes capable of every sort of bestial habit and crime, without fear, without pleasure, without horror, and without pity. It is in the blunt hand and ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... conditional; in which no one is incriminated, and nothing, is called by its right name. There are species of intermediate courses which allow of waiting and seeing; in delicate crises men who are in earnest must not inconsiderately mingle with possible events that bluntness which is called Justice. The High Court took advantage of this, it drew up a prudent judgment; this judgment is not known; it is published here for the first time. Here it is. It is a masterpiece of ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... the task. Three strokes, and the limb, from just above the elbow, was no longer Samoa's; and he saw his own bones; which many a centenarian can not say. The very clumsiness of the operation was safety to the subject. The weight and bluntness of the instrument both deadened the pain and lessened the hemorrhage. The wound was then scorched, and held over the smoke of the fire, till all signs of blood vanished. From that day forward it healed, and troubled Samoa ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... remarkable feature about the sperm whale is the bluntness of its clumsy head, which looks somewhat like a big log with the end sawn square off, and this head is about ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... was but half achieved, put her hand upon his shoulder, and asked him to let her taste the grog again. I also, to make him feel more at ease, helped myself to a glass. Tom did the same, and old Tom with more regard to the feelings of the Dominie than in his own bluntness of character I would have given him credit for, said in a quiet tone, "The old gentleman is afraid of grog, because he seed me take a drop too much, but that's no reason why grog ar'n't a good thing, and wholesome in moderation. ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... commonly him," as his little son once said, "that saw the hare sitting." And his perception of colour was very delicate as well as his mere sight. As Mr. Ruskin has pointed out, his landscape painting is almost all done by the lucid use of colour. Nevertheless this bluntness of organization in relation to the less important senses, no doubt contributed something to the singleness and simplicity of the deeper and more vital of Scott's romantic impressions; at least there is good reason to suppose that delicate and ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... concert-director, had dispatched a publisher named Bland to Esterhaz to endeavour to persuade Haydn to alter his mind. Bland was shown into a room adjoining that in which Haydn happened to be shaving, and whilst seated there he overheard the composer growling to himself over the bluntness of his razors. At length Bland caught the exclamation, 'Ach! I would give my best quartet for a good razor!' and without more ado, he rushed off to his lodgings and returned in a few minutes with a pair of razors, which he presented to Haydn. The Capellmeister ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... companion; Wolf's face was set like flint. He was buttoned into the familiar old overcoat, a tall, brown, clean-shaven, and just now scowling young man of the accepted American type, firm of jaw, keen of eye, and with a somewhat homely bluntness of feature preventing him from being describable as handsome, or with at best a rough, hard, open-eyed sort of handsomeness that was as unconscious of itself as the beauty of a ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... dragged unwillingly to the consulting-room of a Cavendish Square physician by her father, who had insisted on having "a tonic or something" prescribed for her. The physician was one of those men who achieve a fashionable practice by an outrageous bluntness—a calculatedly outrageous bluntness. He had found that women like to be bullied by ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... His bluntness amused me, and I laughed. He saw my circumstances, and there could be no service in disguise. I told ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... was defendant in a suit, having first communicated this very purpose to the senate: he saved the friend but was so far from being angry at his accuser, although the latter spoke most bluntly, that when he had to undergo a scrutiny regarding his morals the emperor acquitted him, saying that his bluntness was a necessary thing on account of the out-and-out baseness of the mass of mankind. Augustus, indeed, punished others who were reported to be conspiring against their sovereign. He had quaestors hold office in the ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... as he said: "You have attained one attribute of a soldier assuredly,—bluntness. Positively, Strahan, you have developed amazingly. Why, only the other day we were boys squabbling to determine who should have the first shot at an owl we saw in the mountains. The result was, the owl took flight. You never gave in an inch to me then, and I liked you all the better for ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... but yourself must confess it was in character. Those who know me at all, know that I have always been actuated by different principles from the rest of mankind: and while none regarded the interest of his friend more, no man on earth regarded his own less. I have often affected bluntness to avoid the imputation of flattery; have frequently seemed to overlook those merits too obvious to escape notice, and pretended disregard to those instances of good nature and good sense, which I could ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... answered Hollingsworth with his customary bluntness. "They have neither of them spoken ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the great Company's secretary," said Geoffrey, with a bluntness under which the other winced, as he turned towards ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... ball with one of her young friends. A man well known for his bluntness, whose acquaintance she is to make later in life, but whom she now sees for the first time, Monsieur Foullepointe, has commenced a conversation with Caroline's friend. According to the custom of society, Caroline ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... women of Flanders. Is it imagination, or can one really trace somewhat of the same idea in Flora's kingdom? The Dutch roses, tulips, and other flowers, like the naval architecture of the Low Countries, have a certain breadth of beam and bluntness of prow that makes them differ from the same fragrant family of France. Has any learned essayist ever attempted to draw philosophical deductions from these aspects of the vegetable world, as showing local kinship ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... falling water, not condensed and formidable as in the gorge of the river, but scattered and sounding gaily and musically from glen to glen. Here, too, the spirits of my driver mended, and he began to sing aloud in a falsetto voice, and with a singular bluntness of musical perception, never true either to melody or key, but wandering at will, and yet somehow with an effect that was natural and pleasing, like that of the song of birds. As the dusk increased, I fell more and more under the spell of this artless ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... replied the Sage, with unaccountable bluntness; "truth to tell, these orations about nothing in particular, spouted by persons with an imperfect knowledge of, I should say, almost ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... couldn't have kept closer . . . without too much treading upon the Author's Heels, and destroying our Design of giving it an easie, Comick Style, most agreeable to our present Times" (Terence's Comedies, p. xx). To this end it was necessary to tone down the "familiarity and bluntness in [Terence's] Discourse" which were "not so agreeable with the Manners and Gallantry of our Times." This was intended to bring Terence up to the level of gentility for which he was credited by compensating for the barbarity of Roman social manners. But ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... in social gatherings he was ill at ease, and unable to take part in the tactful conversation and studied courtesies of society that make for success. His convictions were passionately idealistic, and he often stated them with a bluntness and utter lack of diplomacy that would have made Beethoven claim him as a brother; although MacDowell felt none of that old giant's bitterness towards Society. Where Beethoven felt contempt for even the praise of those he knew were not great enough to understand him, MacDowell ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... Asiatic congeners. He conforms to their customs and allows them to delay and prevaricate to their hearts' content. He is an adept in the art of bribery, has emissaries everywhere, and is much too deeply imbued with this Asiatic spirit for the bluntness of European methods. "You must beat about the bush with a Russian," we are told. "You must flatter them and humbug them. You must talk about everything but the thing. If you want to buy a horse you must pretend you want to sell ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Gideon, however, agreed upon the more tactful summons. They discussed, indeed, the propriety of admitting Sharon to the conference. Each felt that he might heedlessly offend the young intellectual by putting things with a bluntness for which he had often been conspicuous. Yet they agreed at last that he might be present, for each secretly distrusted his own firmness in the presence of one with so strong an appeal as their boy. They admonished Sharon to be gentle. But each hoped that if the need rose ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... in his way of bluntness, "there ain't no horse you can git, but I warned you 'bout the claim, and I don't want to see you lose it, all ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... injury. Of late she had seemed absolutely changed towards him; and from being his good friend, with established intimacies, she had turned before his very eyes into an alien, almost an enemy, more beautiful than ever, to be true, but perverse, mocking, impish. She flouted him for his youth, his bluntness, his guileless transparency. But hardest of all to bear was the delicate derision with which she treated his awkward attempts to express his passion for her, to speak of the fever which had taken possession of ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... of their picturesque quality. An uglier dog never went footsore. A dozen breeds cropped out here and there on his hardy body; his coat was distantly suggestive of a collie; his tail of a terrier. But something of width between the patient eyes and bluntness in the scarred muzzle spoke to a tough and hardy ancestor in his discreditable pedigree, as though a lady of his house had once gone away with a bulldog. His part in the company was to do tricks outside beerhouses. When the Signor's strumming ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... at the least—more likely six weeks," she said with kind bluntness. It was best he should know the worst ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... two cousins busily engaged chopping at a tree of suitable dimensions. They worked hard all that day, and the next, and the next, before the canoe was hollowed out; but, owing to their inexperience and the bluntness of their tools, their first attempt proved abortive—it was too heavy at one end, and did not balance well ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... do, boy," said the captain, with soldierly bluntness. "I think you must have known he wanted to escape, and that you helped him to get out of the window; and I consider it a miserably contemptible return for the kindness of your ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... A certain bluntness in the question, and the real or affected anxiety of the young man's tone brought the ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and demanded, 'Your ticket, sir!' you probably forgot how in fumbling for it in your pocket, you found it, but not your porte-monnaie. You perhaps set down in your mental memorandum, under the head of Appearances, not to be deceived by plain bluntness and snuff-color. There you were wrong; your boasted reason is of no avail in detecting humbugs; there is no such thing as classifying them. Then, too, we are in greater danger of being humbugged by another class ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... out by this time," he answered with the bluntness which he claimed as a prerogative of his calling and nation, "that a soldier of Napoleon's who intrigues will make a better career than one who ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... had been almost happy, but their occupation humiliated them since they had begun to set a higher value on themselves, and their disgust increased while they were mutually glorifying and spoiling each other. Pecuchet contracted Bouvard's bluntness, and Bouvard assumed a little ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... soldier. When he became Minister, the facts which he stated from the tribune appeared often strange, but coming from so honest a man we accepted them. One falsehood, however, after another was exposed, and at last we discovered that H. himself, with all his military bluntness and sincerity, was a most intrepid, ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... such scenes, Ruth could remember nothing in his manner but a sort of invigorating, friendly bluntness, totally at variance with the peculiarities of the "lady's man" that Louis had insinuated he was accounted. She resolved to scrutinize him more narrowly the ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... disguise of a serving man, all his greatness and pomp laid aside, this good earl proffered his services to the king, who, not knowing him to be Kent in that disguise, but pleased with a certain plainness, or rather bluntness in his answers, which the earl put on (so different from that smooth oily flattery which he had so much reason to be sick of, having found the effects not answerable in his daughter), a bargain was quickly ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... necessary traits in the character of a great people: the love and the habit of civil liberty and religious conviction and independence. Allied to these is another trait—truthfulness. To speak the truth in word and action, to the verge of bluntness and offense—and with more relish sometimes because it is individually obnoxious and unlovely—is an English trait, clearly to be traced in the character of this people, notwithstanding the equivocations of Elizabethan ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... then, thinking it foolish to waste time, begged her to forgive bluntness, and told her of the death of Matelgar and of the sore danger of the town, and of how Osric had hidden me take Alswythe to Glastonbury to the bishop, and how he would himself care ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... visibly relaxed his efforts to meet the Spanish negotiator. Perhaps no other course could have been more effectual in securing success than this obvious indifference to it. In the prevalent condition of public feeling and of his own sentiments Mr. Adams easily assumed towards General Vives a decisive bluntness, not altogether consonant to the habits of diplomacy, and manifested an unchangeable stubbornness which left no room for discussion. His position was simply that Spain might make such a treaty as the United States demanded, or might take (p. 124) the consequences of her refusal. His dogged will ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... the serving-woman with unusual bluntness. "But I daresay the master will find something for him to do. He is clever ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... high spirits, her artless bluntness, the quaint superstitions of the mountain child, gained her the goodwill and approval of the king and queen, of Dr. Gunther, the court physician, of the whole royal household, and, above all, of the lady-in-waiting, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... King Constantine's dethronement was decreed, not because it was lawful, but because France required it, and England, for good reasons, could not let France bring it about alone: what Russia thought of the transaction, she soon let the whole world know with disconcerting bluntness. Petrograd not only withdrew her troops from the performance, but made short work of the "guarantee" and "protection" quibbles by roundly declaring that "the choice of the form of government in Greece, as well as its administrative organization, ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... joys, so often interrupted by the absence of the husbands, is to be the means of putting an end to the calamitous war by which Greece had so long been torn in pieces. In particular, the honest bluntness of the Lacedaemonians ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... said with a bluntness bordering on brutality, "all this is changing me into a man unfit to touch you. I ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... fellow Who, having been prais'd for bluntness, doth affect A saucy roughness, and constrains the garb Quite from his nature: he cannot flatter, he,— An honest mind and plain,—he must speak truth! An they will take it, so; if not, he's plain. These kind of knaves I know which in this plainness Harbour more craft and more corrupter ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... sympathizing with, every statement made, or emotion expressed, is almost equally disagreeable. It is unmanly, and is felt to be dishonest. "It may seem difficult," says Richard Sharp, "to steer always between bluntness and plain dealing, between merited praises and lavishing indiscriminate flattery; but it is very easy—good humor, kindheartedness, and perfect simplicity, being all that are requisite to do what is right in the right way." At the same time ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... rather a poor sort of chap if I didn't manage to do pretty well—under you," he said, with awkward bluntness, looking straight between ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... undoubtedly the most useful work—the work that conduces most to the general happiness. But we of the proletariate can't take our choice always: as your English proverb plainly puts it, with your true English bluntness, "beggars mustn't be choosers." We must, each in his place, do the work that's set before us by the privileged classes. It's impossible for us to go nicely discriminating between work that's useful for the community, work ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... exceedingly sensitive with the Mizora people. They detected odors so refined that I was not aware of them. I have often seen a chemist take a bottle of perfumery and name its ingredients from the sense of smell only. No one appeared surprised at the bluntness of my senses. When I spoke of this Wauna tried ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... modern "Greaser," or Mexican—his index finger steeped in cigarette stains; his velvet jacket and his crimson sash; the many-flounced skirt and lace manta of his women, and their caressing intonations—the one musical utterance of the whole hard-voiced city. I suppose I had a boy's digestion and bluntness of taste in those days, for the combined odor of tobacco, burned paper, and garlic, which marked that melodious ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... farther afield, and each night trooped merrily in through the gates with hopes of homes and clearings rising in our hearts—until the motionless figure of the young Virginian met our eye. It was then that men began to scoff at him behind his back, though some spoke with sufficient backwoods bluntness to his face. And yet he gave no sign of anger or impatience. Not so the other leaders. No sooner did the danger seem past than bitter strife sprang up within the walls. Even the two captains were mortal enemies. One was Harrod, a tall, spare, dark-haired man of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... introductions were over, Mrs. Danvers said she was tired, and must rest a little. Very few words will do justice to her personal appearance. Brevity, and breadth, and bluntness were her chief characteristics, which applied equally to her figure, her face, and her extremities, and, not unfrequently, to her speech too. Her health was really infirm, but she never could attain the ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... at the table, and was taken at once into the dining room, where Judithe regarded with interest this extremist who would not allow a secret agent of the North time for prayers. He did not look very ferocious, though his manner had a bluntness not usual in the Southern men she had met—a soldier above and beyond everything else, intelligent, but not broad, good looking with the good looks of dark, curly hair, a high color, heavy mustache, which he had a weakness for caressing as he talked, and full, bold eyes roaming about promiscuously ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... manner in which he was allowed to be a model, and which was as natural to him as it was universal, if ever the interests of truth came in conflict with the dictates of society, he flung minor considerations behind his back, and came out with some startling piece of bluntness at which his mother was utterly confounded. These occasions were very rare; he never sought them. Always where it was possible he chose either to speak or be silent in an unexceptionable manner. But sometimes the ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... like the way her uncle acted while he listened—and afterward. He talked a good deal about Gale and the way she was treating her cousin. When Nan declared she never would have anything to do with him, her uncle told her with disconcerting bluntness to get all that out of her head, for she was going to marry him. When she protested she never would, Duke told her, with many harsh oaths, that she should never marry de Spain even if he had to kill him or get killed to stop ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... knew how to make a better use of it than to get together over rum and tea if you are women, or over beer and pipes if you are men, and talk scandal at your neighbours' expense. Come, friends," she added, changing at once from bluntness to courtesy, "oblige me by taking your cans and going home. I expect several persons to call to-day, and it will be inconvenient to have the avenues to ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... seek an interview with Cecco del Vecchio. But that stern Republican had received him with coldness. His foreign mercenaries, and his title of Senator, were things that the artisan could not digest. With his usual bluntness, he had said ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... 1908, a few months before his death, is valuable. He knew he was a dying man, and not only wished to collect these fugitive bits of verse, but wished to leave behind him his theory of poetry. With characteristic bluntness, he says that the poems which follow the Preface were mostly written "before the views just stated, with which they have little to do, had come ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... more, no less. I am in no position to think of love and marriage, and I have no inclination that way. I am willing to be friends with everybody, and nothing more with anybody." The sentences came with the cruel detachment of bullets; but, "Not again, not twice," was his uppermost thought. Any bluntness, any ruggedness, rather than another month like that of the ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... some unguessed depths of that sunken chest was remarkable in its suggestion of a virile power that the general appearance of the man seemed to deny. Facing his companion suddenly, he asked with a direct bluntness, "Are you not Aaron King—son of the Aaron King ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... see your most indefensible and even futile-appearing action gave the cue for my greatest interest,' said Vida, with a mixture of anxiety and bluntness. 'For just the woman you were, to do so brainless a thing—what was behind? That was ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... remember it's his own will you shall live at 'The Tiger,'" warned Job. "Excuse my bluntness in reminding you of his words; which, no doubt, you committed to memory long before you told me about 'em; but the point lies there. You can't be in two places at once, and so sure as you sign yourself 'Gurd,' you'll sell, or sublet 'The Seven Stars.' In fact, even a simple brain like mine can ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... the same reason, read inversely, the plainer and cleverer is the bosom you would fire, the more personal you must be upon the subject of its grace and loveliness. Flattery you know, is ever the match which kindles the Flame of love. True it is that some by roughness of demeanour and bluntness in speech, contrasting with those whom they call the "herd," have the art to succeed in the service of the bodyless god.[FN154] But even ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... go a great way back, and begin with our grandfathers, with the ancestors who freed us from Great Britain, but did not free themselves from the illusion that equality resides in incivility and honesty in bluntness. That was something they transmitted to us intact, so that we are now not only the best-hearted but the worst-mannered of mankind. If our habitual carriage were not rubber-tired by irony, we should be an intolerable offence, if not to the rest of the world, at least to ourselves. ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... the Uzbeg fashion, telling us in eastern phraseology "to consider his dominion as our own, and that we might command all he possessed." After many compliments of this nature, he inquired with some bluntness whither we were bound and what our object was? We answered him, that we were proceeding to Koollum, and were anxious to get as much information as he would be good enough to afford us concerning so beautiful a portion of the globe, and ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... don't weigh very heavy," said Jerry, in a shamefaced bluntness, as if he wronged the absent goddess through such crudities. "You can't seem to see anybody that's had the thoughts she has and the way she's got of putting 'em—you can't see 'em very big-framed or heavy, can you? ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... contemplates the possibility of having occasion for the army, and does not wish to tamper with the service or play any tricks with it. It is curious to see the working and counterworking of his real opinions and principles with his false position, and the mixture of bluntness, facility and shrewdness, discretion, levity and seriousness, which, colouring his mind and character by turns, make up the strange compound of ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... this speech was so fresh, clear, and sweet that I am afraid Courtland thought little of its bluntness or its conventional transgressions. But it brought him his own tongue quite unemotionally and quietly. "I don't know what was in that note, Miss Dows, but I can hardly believe that Major Reed ever put my present felicity ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... set herself to work to discover what manner of man her son was. She was puzzled; he was brave, generous, full of high spirits, truthful, even to bluntness. She could not discover any grave fault in him. She thanked God he had no vices, no mean faults, ...
— The Coquette's Victim • Charlotte M. Braeme
... men of the first rank and fashion in England," cries Harry, not choosing to be offended with his companion's bluntness. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had shown his friendliness to their section, the Southern politicians, usually intensely partisan, could not appreciate the President's attitude toward the civil service and other questions, and his bluntness offended many of them. They followed him on the tariff but opposed him on most other questions, for his theory of Democracy and theirs diverged, and his kindly attitude ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... of those persons who, being taken by the world at their own estimate of themselves, contrive to pass upon the times in which they live for much more than they are worth. His bluntness gained him credit for superior honesty, and the same peculiarity of exterior gave a weight, not their own, to his talents; the roughness of the diamond being, by a very common mistake, made the measure of its value. The negotiation for his alliance on this occasion was managed, if not ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... as to get him in his power"; the thirst for money in Savary, the Jacobin defects of Fouche, the vanity and sensuality of Cambaceres, the careless cynicism and "the easy immorality" of Talleyrand, the "dry bluntness" of Duroc, the courtier-like insipidity of Maret, "the silliness" of Berthier; he brings this out, diverts himself with it, and profits by it. "Where he sees no vice, he encourages weaknesses, and, in default of anything better, he provokes fear, so that he may be ever and continually ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... multitudes of Galilee, they are but shutting their eyes to one half of the facts which it is their duty to explain. Speaking generally, we do well to distrust the dilemma as a form of argument; but in this case there need be no hesitation in putting the alternative with all possible bluntness: either Christ was God, or He was not good. That Jesus, if He were merely a good man, with a good man's consciousness of and sensitiveness to His own weakness and limitations, could yet have arrogated to Himself the right to be the ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... eternity." "As an infant in the womb is preparing to dwell in this world, so ought we to consider our present life as a preparation for the life to come."37 At another time he says, with stunning bluntness, "There is nothing after death, and ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... man hitched uneasily on his chair, but at last, with his characteristic bluntness said, "Hanged if I know! They say that them that gits down doesn't very often git up again. Yet I know they ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... this indifference confined to Egyptians. It was reflected among the English and other European officials, who pronounced Gordon unpractical and peculiar, while in their hearts they only feared his candour and bluntness. But even public opinion at home, as reflected in the Press, seemed singularly blind to the fresh claim he had established on the admiration of the world. His China campaigns had earned him ungrudging praise, and a fame which, but for his own diffidence, would have carried him to the highest ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
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