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More "Brusque" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his brusque manner, "I like fair-play. If Cheenbuk is going to carry off one of our maidens, it seems to me reasonable that an Eskimo maid should be left in her place. There is one of their girls who is named Cowlik. I am willing to take Cowlik and ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... rather difficult also to see wherein the character of Mittler is reminiscent of Sterne. Mittler is introduced with the obvious purpose of representing certain opinions and of aiding the development of the story by his insistence upon them. He represents a brusque, practical kind of benevolence, and his eccentricity lies only in the extraordinary occupation which he has chosen for himself. Riemann also traces to Sterne, Fielding and their German followers, ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... notice of father," said Cicely, with the brusque directness of youth, and Aunt Ellen seemed to be somewhat bewildered at the statement, not liking to impute blame to her sovereign, but unable for the moment to find ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... beauty, and misfortune; and this lost him his life, but rendered his memory glorious. Until then he had been only eloquent; he now showed that he possessed sensibility. Petion, on the contrary, remained cold as a sectarian, and rude as a parvenu; he affected a brusque familiarity with the royal family, eating in the queen's presence, and throwing the rind of fruit out of the window, at the risk of striking the king's face. When Madame Elizabeth poured him out some wine, he raised ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... friendship. You will be satisfied with him in all respects." This is extremely well, and I rejoice at it: one little circumstance only may, and I hope will, be altered for the better. Take pains to undeceive those who thought that 'petit ton un peu delcide et un peu brusque'; as it is not meant so, let it not appear so. Compose your countenance to an air of gentleness and 'douceur', use some expressions of diffidence of your own opinion, and deference to other people's; such as, "If I might be permitted to say—I should think—Is it not rather so? At least I have ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... At a brusque sign from Chauvelin, Brogard had hurried back to the inner room, and the former now beckoned to the man ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... who, already well-known from the earliest wars of the revolution, had been almost continually in command of various Corps during those of the empire; so that it was surprising that he had not yet been awarded the baton of a marshal; withheld perhaps because of his brusque and abrupt manner. His detractors said, after his defeat, that his desire to obtain this coveted honour had driven him, with no more than 20,000 men, to stand rashly in the path of 200,000 of the enemy, with ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... both feared and misunderstood them. Their changing moods, their unaccountable likes and dislikes, their petty ambitions and vanities he accepted as part of the heritage of a race of beings apart form his own, and he hid his timidity under a brusque manner which gave him credit for a keener penetration than he actually possessed. And, strangely enough, Fate, with sardonic humor, had given him a knack, which so few painters possess, of catching on canvas the elusive charm of his feminine sitters, of ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... were cordial. They did not seem to remark that the State chairman kept his seat and was brusque in his greeting. Political abstraction excused general disregard to conventions among the men-folks that morning. The Duke was there. He patronized them with a particularly ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... man, belonging, as I knew from previous inquiry, to rather an exceptional class of individuals in America, I did not suffer my mind to be biassed, although I could see that many of the passengers were not disposed to view the matter in the same light. He was a brusque and uncouth man, of swaggering gait, about forty years of age, above the middle stature, and soon let the captain and crew know, by his authoritative manner and volubility of tongue, that he was chief in command on the occasion. No one seemed, however, to dispute this, for the passengers looked ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... and impressed by the brusque bitterness of Lieut. D'Hubert's tone. They left the house together, and in the street he was still more mystified by ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... eighteen cents, which left me two cents over for emergencies." Balzac somewhat exaggerates his poverty and reduces his expenses to suit the pleasure of his poetic fantasy, but undoubtedly it was a brusque transition from the bourgeois comfort of family life to the ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... let him into the secret, the Prince would be most likely to stride straight into the Princess's rooms with the brusque words: "Gottfried has seen a letter come to you from your father—what were ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the service of the throne, rude in his manners, with an iron will in action, but supple in manoeuvres, withal an ambitious noble, possessing the honor of a soldier and the wiles of a politician. He had the hand his face demanded,—large and hairy like that of a guerrilla; his manners were brusque, his speech concise. The duke, in departing, gave to this man the duty of watching and reporting to him the conduct of Beauvouloir toward ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... moment at the landing to look back, but I could see nothing in the dark pit of the hall below us. Was it possible I could remember it alight with candles, whose flames made soft halos on the polished floor? Brutus touched my shoulder, and the brusque grasp of his hand turned ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... was vibrantly conscious of the man's strange, forceful personality. His brusque, hard speeches fell on her like so many blows, and yet behind them she felt as though there were something that appealed—something hurt and seeking to hide its hurt behind an armour of ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... sympathy; and his intellectual alertness bewildered and fascinated her. She was still shy at thirty-five, and really very timid and apologetic for her commonplaceness; but at times the rebellious bitterness at the bottom of her heart would leap forth in a brusque or bold speech. She was still capable ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... having been brusque with her. For she was only a little slip of a girl after all and obviously one who had never been thrown out into the current of life where it ran strongest. More than ever she made him think of the girl of olden ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... do with God.” Whether he had studied Descartes or not, he evidently did not share the enthusiasm of Arnauld and others for his philosophy. He even spoke of it as “useless, uncertain, and troublesome—nay, as ridiculous.” {177} He has added, in that brusque, rapid, forceful style characteristic of many of his Thoughts, that “he did not think the whole of philosophy worth an hour’s trouble.” Again: “To set light by philosophy is the true philosophy.” When we look at such expressions, and many ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... university days, when he lectured us and pruned us and advised us and did us more good than almost any other instructor we ever had. Oh, those were grand days! No better than the present, for life grows brighter to me all the time; but we shall not forget the quaint, strong, brusque professor who so unceremoniously smashed things which he did not like, and shook, the class with merriment or indignation. The widest awake professorial room in the land was Dr. Henry's, in the New York University. But the participators in those scenes are all scattered. I know the whereabouts ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... it should," was the somewhat brusque reply. "I have no doubt that the New York papers have some wonderful headlines—'How an Englishman catches the steamer!' or 'An English diplomatist, eager to fight'—and all that sort of thing. But apart from the spectacular side of it, I don't suppose they consider ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... nondescript situation.' Macnaghten gave him no responsibility, and while Burnes waited for the promised reversion of the office of envoy, he chiefly employed himself in writing long memorials on the situation and prospects of affairs, on which Macnaghten's marginal comments were brusque, and occasionally contemptuous. The resolute and clear-headed Pottinger, who, if the opportunity had been given him, might have buttressed and steadied Macnaghten, was relegated to provincial service. ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... natural infection, insidious and increasing amounts of poison come quite gradually into play, and for this reason, perhaps, hypoleucocytosis in the normal course of infectious diseases is much rarer than in the brusque conditions ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... The question barked out, brusque and sharp, but never had a voice sounded more welcome in Elliott Cameron's ears. She turned around in joyful relief to encounter a pair of gimlet-like black eyes in the face of an old woman. She was an ugly little old woman in a battered straw hat and a shabby ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... suppose That the Grasshopper wore his summer clothes, And stood there kicking his frozen toes And shaking his bones apart; And the Ant, with a sealskin coat and hat, Commanded the Grasshopper, brusque and flat, To "Dance through the winter," and things like that, Which he thought were ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... opinions, has conquered me. I had intended to interview him, report in detail what he said, picture his life and his figure, then bow him my "au revoir," and march back. That he was specially disagreeable and brusque in his manner, which would make me quarrel with him immediately, was ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... "camere locande" the landlady dressed all the meals, though the lodgers bought the provisions. So Gerard's hostess speedily detected him, and asked him if he was not ashamed himself: by which brusque opening, having made him blush and look scared, she pacified herself all in a moment, and appealed to his good sense whether Adversity was a thing to be overcome on an ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... and, together with the radical element which has been introduced on the Democratic side of the Senate Chamber, they manifest evident impatience with these regulations. That fine old term "senatorial courtesy" has lost much of its meaning as a result of the brusque and breezy manner of the time. No longer is it said that the young Senator must be seen rather than heard. Indeed, while formerly the spectacle of a Senator rising to make a speech before the close of his second year in the Senate was regarded as unusual, ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... longs for light, she was yet the only girl out of all her set who had never had any especial attention. Perhaps it was because she was no flirt. Bell Masters said no girl could get along who did not flirt. Perhaps because in her excessive truthfulness she was sometimes blunt and almost brusque; it is dreadfully out of place not to be able to lie a little at times. Even Mrs. Upjohn, the female lay-head of the Presbyterians, who was a walking Decalogue, her every sentence being a law beginning with Thou shalt not, admitted practically, if not ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... man looked up quickly, as if he did not quite understand the brusque ways of his new acquaintance, who put his questions so directly. But the new acquaintance seemed good-humored and quite at his ease, and evidently had not the least idea of being rude or over-inquisitive. He had ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... infamiam," said Caesar, speaking of the Germans. Pillage brings no shame. This desire of gain, this positive and realistic tendency is one of the motives which the brusque and prodigious economic expansion of Germany has promoted in ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... to his associate counsel, declaring that if "that giraffe" was permitted to appear in the case he would throw up his brief and leave it. Lincoln keenly felt the affront, but his great nature forgave it so entirely that, recognizing the singular abilities of Stanton beneath his brusque exterior, he afterwards, for the public good, appointed him to ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... Little Red Doctor, speaking with the brusque informality of one assured of his place as a local celebrity. "I don't know you, ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... uncertain as to the enemy with which he had to deal; but he was not the man to submit tamely to conduct so brusque and uncourteous as was that of the videttes. His resistance ended in putting both of them hors de combat; but the circumstances of the encounter, for certain reasons, had been somewhat misrepresented ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... wore a large watch-chain, with a prodigious bunch of seals, alternated by small keys and old-fashioned mourning-rings. His complexion was pale and sodden, and his hair short, dark, and sleek. The bookseller valued himself on a likeness to Buonaparte; and affected a short, brusque, peremptory manner, which he meant to be the indication of the vigorous and decisive character of ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... be able to come, but half will; and mother'll give orders for the spread. And now I must be off. Good-bye, and enjoy yourselves.' And the millionaire, with a brusque nod, was off. ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... suddenly brusque. "Never mind. We'll let it go for now. Report to the Discipline Master in Intensity Five for ten ...
— But, I Don't Think • Gordon Randall Garrett
... He was our king at the Garrick Club, to which, however, I did not yet belong. He gave the best dinners of my time, and was,—happily I may say is, [Footnote: Alas! within a year of the writing of this he went from us.]—the best giver of dinners. A man rough of tongue, brusque in his manners, odious to those who dislike him, somewhat inclined to tyranny, he is the prince of friends, honest as the sun, and as openhanded ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... And I—was I brusque and surly? Or oppressively bland and fond? Was I partial to rising early? Or why did we twain abscond, All breakfastless, too, from the public view, To prowl by a ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... beyond, with its cat-runs, and its one stunted sumach tree; the dark-brown stare of Monsieur Harmost's rolling eyes brought back that time of happiness, when she used to come week after week, full of gaiety and importance, and chatter away, basking in his brusque admiration and in music, all with the glamourous feeling that she was making him happy, and herself happy, and going to play very ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... One brusque, heavy man, who thought to carry the matter through by a coup de main, he was sure could never succeed. A second, who was most assiduous, but whose brazen confidence was unyielding, he counted still ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... invariably bitter to an extreme, he sometimes had flashes of quite unexpected and very singular sensibility which make him beloved. Somewhat in imitation of La Rochefoucauld, but more particularly in conformity with his own nature, he developed a brief, concise, brusque style which became that of the moralist and even of the general author for the next fifty years, a style which was that of Montesquieu and Voltaire, and superseded the broad, sustained, balanced, harmonious, ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... can't marry us both," said the marquis, replying to Laurence; "and the time has come," he continued, in the brusque tone of a man who is struck to the ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... a hasty word," said Berwin nervously. "I am glad of your company, although I seem rather brusque. You must go over the house ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... the dining-room of the Eagle Hotel, Dunbury's one hostelry, it seemed to Phil that his host was distinctly nervous, with considerably less than his usual brusque, dogmatic poise ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... for repentance.' I am rich enough to give sound advice," said the brusque old physician, ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... follows you shall meet with arbitrary apothegms, brusque transitions, inconsecutive statements, veritable somersaults of thought, do not cry out that you have been deceived. We are about to enter—if it be that you wish to accompany me—upon a field of ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... vexation, found that some spring of her own nature had been touched, and that her eyes also were overflowing. As she looked around deprecatingly, and half-ashamed, she saw that there was a prospect of a general shower, and that many of the women were sniffling audibly, and the brusque young farmer stood near, looking as if he could more easily hold a span of run-away horses than he ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... young artist!' she said, her voice perceptibly less harsh and brusque than it had been when speaking to my companion. 'Hope nothing and ask nothing until you may have ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... by the inhabitants of Cuba to the natives of Mexico, and in Vera Cruz to those of the interior. The name is also applied to shrewd and brusque persons. (New ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... amount of excitement that she had created in him by her brusque rudeness, her high spirits, even the jarring of her loud laugh, was beginning to lose its effect; or rather the effect was changed. Instead ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... was simply the result of Henchard's permission to him to see Elizabeth if he were minded to woo her. At first he had taken no notice of Henchard's brusque letter; but an exceptionally fortunate business transaction put him on good terms with everybody, and revealed to him that he could undeniably marry if he chose. Then who so pleasing, thrifty, and satisfactory in every way ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... "holiness"; it denounces licentiousness, and sets up as its ideal the controlling of the passions and the infinite improvement of the soul, not of the intellect alone, but of the feelings as well. These differences between the two theories of life showed themselves in the brusque opposition in character and customs that made the Greeks and the Jews absolute antipodes in many spheres of life. It cannot be denied that in matters of the intellect, especially in the field of philosophy and science, not to ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... of the day passed to all appearance very soberly. Helen was away. The Doctor's carriage neither came nor went; the Doctor himself, with his kindly voice, and his somewhat brusque, determined manner, awoke no echoes in the old house. Nurse was far away in the nursery wing, with the pretty, brown-eyed baby and the children; all the girls and the little ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... reason why I spoke to you just now," he said, much more gently than usual. "I knew that she was a little brusque sometimes; and I suppose I am not much better. As a rule a father does not talk to his girls as I have been talking to you, I fancy. I am almost as ignorant of a father's duties to his daughter as you say you are of the habits of English ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... a kind sort of woman, sends him here. She believes it will work his reform. I pity her error-for it is an error to believe reform can come of punishment, or that virtue may be nurtured among vice." Thus responds the brusque but kind-hearted old jailer, who view swith an air of compassion his new comer, as he lays, a forlorn mass, exposed to the gaze of the prisoners ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... even shadowed the fair fame of the Archdales. Did his father know of it? Nothing that Stephen had ever seen in him looked like such knowledge, but that did not make the son quite sure, for the old butler's remark about the Colonel's suavity was just; his elaborate manners made Stephen almost brusque at times, and aroused a secret antagonism in both, so that they sometimes met one another with armor on, and Stephen's keen thrust would occasionally penetrate the shield which his father skilfully interposed between that and ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... said the riding-master, with a brusque laugh. 'Sick folk don't usually sit up till past two in the morning ready dressed. Hadn't we better stow that kind of ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Guise showed his dislike of the repellent figure by a brusque giggle, and further expressed what was in his mind by the one ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of Papiol fastened upon the figure which had arrested the attention of Maverick,—a lady of, may-be, forty years, fashionably, but gracefully attired, with olive-brown complexion, hair still glossy black, and attended by a strange gentleman with a brusque and foreign air. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... a combination of business shrewdness and brusque frankness that strongly impressed his landlord. "You see, Rosey," said Nott, complacently describing the interview to his daughter, "when I sorter intimated in a keerless kind o' way that sugar kettles and hair dye was about played out ez securities, he just planked down the money for ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... quite impossible, your Majesty," said the Prime Minister, with a brevity that was almost brusque. "It would entirely confuse the issue in the ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... she put on a new character altogether and relapsed into queer ancestral traits, stripping off, like so many worthless rags, the layers of laboriously acquired civilization. The refined and bashful girl became brusque, supercilious, equivocal. When sympathizing friends said that they had also lost lovers, she laughed and told them to look for new ones. There were better fish ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Mary-'Gusta awaiting them in the parlor. The girl had the feeling that she had been undergoing a rather vigorous cross-examination. Mrs. Wyeth had not talked a great deal herself and her manner, though brusque and matter of fact, was kind; but she had asked questions about Mary-'Gusta's home life, about Captain Gould and Mr. Hamilton, about school and friends and acquaintances. And her comments, when she made any, were direct and to ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... out the words in the brusque way in which a man says all that, for the moment, he is physically able to utter. She allowed more time to elapse. The roar of traffic and the clanging of electric trams came up from the street below, but no sound seemed able to penetrate ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... found that most of them had little or no English, and he made scant progress with them in that particular. The big first mate, Carlos, rebuffed him repeatedly, but he persisted, and in time the rebuffs became less brusque. He also noticed a certain softening of the sailors toward him. His own charm of manner was so great that it was hard to resist it when it was continuously exerted, and sailors, like other men, appreciate help when it is ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... folds. Morgan was beginning to think that she must have deemed it best to omit the innovation, when Cleo rose languorously, took a step towards the great mirror, and, standing erect, inspected herself therein. "Yes, I am worthy of him," she said to herself proudly, then, with a brusque movement, she disengaged the garment from her shoulders and it slipped to the ground and lay there in a soft heap. The spectators then became aware that, save for a sort of transparent web of floating serpentine drapery, it had been her sole covering, and ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... us in his monotonous voice as though he had been saying 'To-morrow—Revue d'Armes'—but for us, after a whole day passed far from barracks, it was a rather brusque return ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... princess presumptuous and humiliating. She confessed to herself that the prince's manners were not in the least improved by his long campaign—that they were somewhat brusque. He took her hand tenderly; leading her to a divan, and seated himself beside her, but suddenly jumping up he left her, and returned in a few moments with his friend ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... he said. His voice, like himself, was rough and brusque, rumbling hollow from the depths of his cavernous chest. The figure in the bunk stirred and muttered. ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... himself it would suddenly die in his throat. He had to make sure before he ventured on the simplest saying, an order, a remark on the wind, a simple good-morning. That's why his utterance was abrupt, his answers to people startlingly brusque and often ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... had better tell me about that matter of business next time I am here," he suggested, with an abruptness which was almost brusque. "I must go now. I do not know why ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... old prowler, should come along and find him, peeping in through Bunker's open door? What if the ray of light which struck out through the door-frame should reveal him to the singer within? And yet he was curious to see her. Since his first brusque refusal to go in and meet her, Bunker had not mentioned his daughter again—perhaps he remembered what was said. For Denver had stated that he had plenty of music himself, if he could ever get his phonograph from Globe. Yet he had had the instrument for nearly a ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... fancy, and a deep, abiding sympathy with all that is beautiful in Nature. I thought I knew Louis Jennings pretty intimately in Parliamentary and social life, but I found a new man hidden in these pages—a beautiful, sunny nature, obscured in the ordinary relations of life by a somewhat brusque manner, and in these last eighteen months soured and cramped by a cruel disease. Jennings knew and loved the country as Gilbert White ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... We do not coalesce; our ideas, age and country are different; he is hard as a rock, brusque and overbearing—but amazingly clever and energetic. He seems to hold so many threads in his hands, to deal with such numbers of people; his correspondence is enormous; his office, when he is at home, is surrounded and stormed by all sorts of people—Mohammedans, ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... the Holy Spirit dwells will always be characterized by gentleness, lowliness, quietness, meekness, and forbearance. The rude, sarcastic spirit, the brusque manner, the sharp retort, the unkind cut—all these belong to the flesh, but they have nothing in common with the gentle teaching ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... himself expressed it, his stomach had been "perturbed as a guard dog in the night when robbers are approaching." All efforts to console or to inspire him with hope of future cure were met with a stern hopelessness, a brusque certainty of perpetual suffering. The idea that his stomach could again know peace evidently shocked and distressed him, and as they all waded together through the sand, pioneered by the glorified Batouch, ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... Parliaments that he thought it really impossible they could ever produce mischief or inconvenience to the kingdom." We always regard with some suspicion Clarendon's artful touches, otherwise we should say that there is a pretty brusque change from this unbounded reverence for the Short Parliament to an appearance in arms against its successor, especially as the leader and soul of both ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... stage where he could fill in the dusk of an early September evening with the talk and company of the one young woman in the world whose talk and company were in any degree worth considering. Brower crunched his cigar between his teeth, and replied to Marshall's observations with a brusque carelessness for which he rebuked himself as being ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... a small, rather square built man of thirty-two, with a very polite manner and a decidedly brusque mind. His face was handsome, with a straight nose, strong jaw, and large, widely opened, and very expressive dark eyes. A vigorous and unusually broad moustache curled upward above his sensual mouth. And the dark hair which closely covered ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... to Pryer, who treated it as something too outrageous to be even thought of. Nothing, he said, could more tend to lower the dignity of the clergy and bring the Church into contempt. His manner was brusque, and even rude. ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... that—that brusque, unsentimental appeal—that Michael needed. He saw himself at that moment, as Falbe saw him, a shelled and muffled figure, intangible and withdrawn, but observing, as it were, through eye-holes, and giving nothing in exchange for ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... very happily constituted. She rose with the sun, like the birds; and she herself resembled the birds by her domestic industry, by her maternal instinct, by her perpetual desire to sing, and by a sort of brusque grace, which I could feel the of very well even as a child. She was the soul of the house, which she filled with her systematic and joyous activity. My father was just as slow as she was brisk. I can recall very ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... Tottenham's found aught but direct and decorous response. His society on these occasions gave her solid pleasure; so did the drive and the lunch; the satisfactions were apparently upon the same plane. She was aware of the plum, if I may be permitted a brusque but irresistible simile; and with her mouth open, her eyes modestly closed, and her head in a convenient position, she waited, placidly, until it should fall in. The Farnham ladies would have been delighted with ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... she began with brusque directness the instant the quartette were seated in the taxicab, "don't keep me in the dark any longer. You must know how—what a queer feeling all ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... discharged them conscientiously. He knew that envious tongues accused him of using them to feather his nest, but he also knew that they accused him falsely. He was thick-skinned, and they might go to the devil. In person he was stout of habit, brusque of bearing, with a healthy, sanguine complexion, a double chin, shrewd grey eyes, and cropped hair which stood up straight as the bristles on a brush. He lived abstemiously, rose at six, went to bed at nine, and might be found, during most of the intervening hours, hard at work ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the large room. They rose at once and exchanged greetings. Robert, although he did not trust them, felt that they had no cause of quarrel with the two, and it was no part of his character to be brusque or seek trouble. ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... their talk about the pictures—the easy mastery, now brusque, now poetic, with which Dalrymple had shown him the treasures of the gallery, in the manner of one whose learning was merely the food of fancy, the stuff on which imagination ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to a stop we were surrounded by an assortment of filthy and emaciated men and women bearing scythes and pitchforks, shouting, yelling and gesticulating, making in fact, such an uproar that no comprehension was possible. However, there was no misunderstanding their brusque motions ordering us away from the plane or the threatening noises which reinforced the command. No sooner had we reluctantly complied than they proceeded methodically to puncture the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... evoked. Boase, who also followed to hounds, felt his heart glow to see how well the boy was received; for Ishmael's surly shyness had passed into a new phase, expressed by a rather charming deference mingled with independence which appealed to the brusque, goodhearted members of the "county," who went to make up the very mixed hunt in ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... cheerful good-fellowship which united them in one. Consequently, I began to feel attracted towards them, and made up my mind that, come what might, I would become of their number. The kind and honourable Operoff I knew already, and now the brusque, but exceptionally clever, Zuchin (who evidently took the lead in this circle) began to please me greatly. He was a dark, thick-set little fellow, with a perennially glistening, polished face, but one that was extremely lively, intellectual, and independent in its expression. ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... when they are directed piercingly to my face; as just now, for instance); and when one asks you a question, or makes a remark to which you are obliged to reply, you rap out a round rejoinder, which, if not blunt, is at least brusque. What do you ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... in his "London and Westminster," Mrs. Black, the wife of the editor of the Morning Chronicle, when asked if she remembered any heads on Temple Bar, used to reply, in her brusque, hearty way, "Boys, I recollect the scene well! I have seen on that Temple Bar, about which you ask, two human heads—real heads—traitors' heads—spiked on iron poles. There were two; I saw one fall (March 31, 1772). Women shrieked as it fell; men, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... himself of them with a brusque gesture and cast a glance over the large decorative canvases of the rotunda, that recalled the wars of the 17th century; generals with bristling mustaches and plumed slouch-hat, directing the battle with a short baton, as though they were directing an orchestra, troops of arquebusiers disappearing ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... backing, they had undertaken some constructive work in northern New York, and, at this time, were building a railroad which passed through Geneva. Alac had been in the neighborhood for two months supervising operations. He was striking in appearance—a florid-faced' blonde, brusque in business, quite jovial socially, and cracking—full of the conceit of youth, wealth and station. So far, life had, in ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... looked at him upon this brusque interrogation, seemed not to understand, and then, suddenly recalling, they declared very naturally that they had left them on the garden table and had not thought ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... the Burgundians and English together in speaking of the enemy which Joan had come to make war upon. But she showed that she made a distinction between them by act and word, the Burgundians being Frenchmen and therefore entitled to less brusque treatment ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... do not admire your friend, Mr. Ham. I think he is a coarse snob; and under an exterior of brusque frankness I believe he is deceitful and—cowardly. I should consider your union with such a person a ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... instrumentation, and in his shameless Salvation Army rhythms; and it is sometimes (as in the Priest's solo with chorus in the last scene of the second act) odiously vulgar. "Aida" is more dramatic than "Traviata," has more of Verdi's brusque energy, less of his sentimentality; but it has none of the youthful freshness of his latest work. The young Verdi has already aged—how long will ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... his manner was the least interested or deferential in talking that I have ever met with in a man of his class. He certainly thought this particular woman of singularly small account, or else the brusque and tactless allusion to his books may perhaps have annoyed him as it did me; but whatever the cause, when he promptly left me at the first approach of a mutual acquaintance, I felt distinctly snubbed. Of the two men, Mr. Gladstone was ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... gnawed his moustache, and the light in his eyes was not a pleasant thing to see. This woman with her reckless life, her odd fascination, her brusque hatred of affectations, was a constant torment to him. If only he could once get her thoroughly ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... gave a brusque order. Another figure waded ashore and joined the two men, a tall, bearded fellow in duffel overalls. As his feet reached the sand he spat ostentatiously. The tinker led the way to ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... Charles Albert had seen, that the king who was to carry out the destinies of Italy should be trusted. Victor Emmanuel came to the throne with few advantages; he was unpopular, his private friends were said to be reactionaries, his brusque manners offended most people. He had practically no advisers in these critical moments, but the moral courage with which he refused the Austrian offers of lenient terms if he would repudiate the Statute and his father's word, won for him the nation's trust, which ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... could comply another arm was proffered, and proffered in a manner so brusque and so determined that the young Forcus fell ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... to think her strange guest was eccentric rather than impolite, and began to take a fancy to the somewhat brusque visitor. ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... a careless custom of committing what they do to printed papers. These papers deal with all sorts of things—from the payment of Rs. 200 to a "secret service" native, up to rebukes administered to Vakils and Motamids of Native States, and rather brusque letters to Native Princes, telling them to put their houses in order, to refrain from kidnapping women, or filling offenders with pounded red pepper, and eccentricities of that kind. Of course, these things could never be made public, because Native Princes ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... resumed his seat, a low rumble of applause was heard from the gallery. It subsided instantly on a gesture of disapproval from the judge, and a silence fell upon the court, in which the clock, with cynical indifference, continued to record in its brusque monotone the passage of the ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... this with a brusque denial. Extracting compliments from the talk of a shy young Westerner was evidently not ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... He puts on a brusque outside, but it is as much to conceal his liking for you as anything, and then he does more for you than he would for any one else in the world. Now, if I had tried for a lifetime, I could not have got him out to Beech Street Church and I doubt if there is any one besides ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... wit, his thin-featured face and keen gray eyes lighting up to a kindliness that his brusque speech denied in vain. He had a fluency of good English at command that he would have thought ostentatious to use in speaking ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... doubt," Nani again hastily replied, as if he feared that the others might be too brusque with the young enthusiast. "The Holy Father has such a lofty mind. And of course it would be necessary to see him. Only, my dear child, you must not excite yourself so much; reflect a little; take your time." And, turning to Benedetta, he added, "Of course his Eminence has not seen Abbe ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... than when Lester had seen him last, and a little grayer. His eyes were bright and steely, but there were crow's-feet on either side. His manner was quick, keen, dynamic. Lester was noticeably of another type—solid, brusque, and indifferent. Men spoke of Lester these days as a little hard. Robert's keen blue eyes did not disturb him in the least—did not affect him in any way. He saw his brother just as he was, for he had the larger philosophic and interpretative insight; but Robert could not place Lester exactly. ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... Diard. As for the quartermaster, though he had no grace in Juana's eyes, we may well absolve him. He loved her distractedly. The Marana, so keen to know the signs of love, had recognized in that man the accents of passion and the brusque nature, the generous impulses, that are common to Southerners. In the paroxysm of her anger and her distress she had thought such qualities enough for her ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... pull a curl," he said and suited the action to the word. He took one of the long light curls and pulled it gently, yet with a brusque show of savagery and strength—"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, and one to make you grow. Now who says ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... assurance to resist, and were both shot. The woman was taken to St. John's, and given the name of May March; next winter she was escorted back to her tribe, but died on the way. These attempts to gain the confidence of the natives were, perhaps, a little brusque, and from this point of view liable to misconstruction by an apprehensive tribe. Ironically enough, the object of the attempt just described was to win a Government reward of L100, offered to any person bringing about a friendly understanding with ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... me to accomplish anything. It's up to you—absolutely," replied a brusque voice, which then softened slightly as it added: "Cheer up. ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... happily constituted. She rose with the sun, like the birds; and she herself resembled the birds by her domestic industry, by her maternal instinct, by her perpetual desire to sing, and by a sort of brusque grace, which I could feel the of very well even as a child. She was the soul of the house, which she filled with her systematic and joyous activity. My father was just as slow as she was brisk. I can recall very well that placid face of his, over which at ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... it taken in that way, Mr. Finn. Your brusque want of courtesy to me I have forgiven, but I shall expect you to make up for it by the alacrity of your congratulations to him. I will not have ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... in his brusque, explosive fashion, "I like Schuyler, and I care not who knows it! Dammy! I was cool enough with him and his lady when they arrived, but he played Valentine to my Orson till I gave up; yes, I did, George, I capitulated. Says he, ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... Galleon, a symbol of so much that was to come to him later. As he grew in position in the school Cards saw him continually. Cards undoubtedly admired his stocky, determined strength, his grey eyes, his brusque speech, his ability at games. He did not pretend also that he was not flattered by Peter's attentions. Curiously, for so young a boy, he had a satirical irony that showed him the world very much in the light that he was always afterwards to see it. To Cards the world was a show, ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... Gladstone's first tenure of office as Chancellor of the Exchequer, a curious adventure occurred to him in the London offices of the late Mr. W. Lindsay, merchant, shipowner and M.P. There one day entered a brusque and wealthy shipowner of Sunderland, inquiring for Mr. Lindsay. As Mr. Lindsay was out, the visitor was requested to wait in an adjacent room, where he found a person busily engaged in copying some figures. The Sunderland shipowner paced the room several times and took ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... didn't take any notice of father," said Cicely, with the brusque directness of youth, and Aunt Ellen seemed to be somewhat bewildered at the statement, not liking to impute blame to her sovereign, but unable for the moment to find ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... that dominates the little hill of Comminges. In order to carry out this design satisfactorily, it was necessary to monopolize the verger of the church for the day. The verger or sacristan (I prefer the latter appellation, inaccurate as it may be) was accordingly sent for by the somewhat brusque lady who keeps the inn of the Chapeau Rouge; and when he came, the Englishman found him an unexpectedly interesting object of study. It was not in the personal appearance of the little, dry, wizened old man that the interest lay, ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... shaken, if it is only a little, just a little, to care for others, a bird or a cat, or a sick person, this will keep the wits steady. A case like this moreover!" repeated Dr. Renaud, laying his finger to his nose. He was round, jolly, bow-legged, and brusque, with pronounced features overstrong for his height, merry eyes, and a red birthmark. "This is the case. We are, you and I and presently Father Rielle, responsible for M. Clairville. He must not be moved except to his bed; he is too far gone for more. The wife ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... riding-master, with a brusque laugh. 'Sick folk don't usually sit up till past two in the morning ready dressed. Hadn't we better stow ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... hastily stow a packet in her luggage. But, though he was Mayor of Auray, he did nothing more about his mother-in-law's death. It is to be remarked, however, that the Hetels themselves were against the brusque dismissal of Helene. She had "smothered the mother with ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... Burnes waited for the promised reversion of the office of envoy, he chiefly employed himself in writing long memorials on the situation and prospects of affairs, on which Macnaghten's marginal comments were brusque, and occasionally contemptuous. The resolute and clear-headed Pottinger, who, if the opportunity had been given him, might have buttressed and steadied Macnaghten, was relegated to provincial service. Throughout his career ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... with God and his own heart, without having learned that his business was to smite on conscience with a strong hand, and to tear away the masks which hid men from themselves. The whole spirit of the old prophets was revived in his brusque, almost fierce, address to such very learned, religious, and distinguished personages. Isaiah in his day had called their predecessors 'rulers of Sodom'; John was not scolding when he called his hearers 'ye offspring of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the princess presumptuous and humiliating. She confessed to herself that the prince's manners were not in the least improved by his long campaign—that they were somewhat brusque. He took her hand tenderly; leading her to a divan, and seated himself beside her, but suddenly jumping up he left her, and returned in a few moments with his ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... been said that in his youth he seemed like an Assyrian Prince; through life he retained his somewhat Asiatic appearance. His eyes were slightly narrowed, his black hair curled lightly over an extremely broad forehead. He spoke little and often in brusque phrase. For this reason he was frequently misunderstood, as the irony and sarcasm with which he sometimes spoke did not tend to make friends. But this attitude was only turned toward those who did not comprehend ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... her orphan asylum. Why not go ask him for a subscription? She wondered if he would be very brusque; insulting, even. The possibilities fascinated her. She felt that she would like a passage at arms with him. He was a man worth worsting. Under such circumstances Fred Starratt would be either liberal ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... lost none of the briskness of youth, despite his lameness, nor his fingers their skill, but his face was a mass of wrinkles. His keen, black eyes, bristling gray beard, predatory nose, and saturnine wit, together with his brusque manner, made strangers fear him. But their aversion was apt to change to idolatry when ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... advance theatrically to the edge of the stage, and, then, pointing an accusing finger at one part of the audience, declare in loud ringing tones, "You're a sneak!" It is questionable whether any attempt at arousing interest could justify such a brusque approach. Only in broadly comic or genuinely humorous addresses can it be said that the end ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... come, my dears," remarked the old lady in her brusque, honest manner, "and I hope to heaven that you will be able to take Theophilus's mind off his flowers. I declare he has grown so besotted about them that I believe he'd sell the very clothes off his back to buy a new ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... "Mac," said the brusque physician, for the first time using the familiar name: "between man and man, now: what about ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... his tone so brusque suddenly that Minks decided after all not to mention his poem where the Pleiades made their appearance as ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... made reservations on the boat?" inquired Colonel Hathaway, refusing to be annoyed by the man's brusque words ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... Andover next day and called upon the Shuttleworths. Mrs. Shuttleworth was kind and affable as usual, but whether my suspicions were ungrounded or not, I thought the rector a trifle brusque in manner, as though annoyed by ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... of that 'Eh bien'? What actor could imitate it? In that 'Eh bien?' there was neither astonishment nor severity, nor brusque recall to duty, but rather the compassionate emotion of an elder brother before a youngster's weakness which he knows is only a passing mood. That 'Eh bien?'—how he put into it, this elder of ours, so much pitiful authority, such sweetness ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... that his nervous activity—the ardent vitality in his appearance—was too aggressive to be wholly pleasing. She had been used to a considerate gentleness from men, and his manner, though frankly sympathetic, had seemed to her almost brusque. ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... and interested than she cared to admit. Her brusque manner was therefore much exaggerated—a dissimulation which troubled her conscience, which was decidedly of ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... answer to Melissa, for I fear it was offensively brusque, my opinion being that Sir Gavial was the more pernicious scoundrel of the two, since his name for virtue served as an effective part of a swindling apparatus; and perhaps I hinted that to call such a man moral showed rather a ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... the hale and vigorous snorting of the Trades, the roll of breakers to landward, and the unremitting gallop of the unnumbered multitudes of gray-green seas, careering silently past the schooner, their crests occasionally hissing into brusque eruptions of white froth, or smiting broad on under her counter, showering her decks with a sprout of icy spray. It was cold; at times thick fogs cloaked all the world of water. To the east a procession ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... him into the secret, the Prince would be most likely to stride straight into the Princess's rooms with the brusque words: "Gottfried has seen a letter come to you from your ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... remembering that he'd been hurried and possibly brusque. It ought not to matter—though it did—since she was hardly a lady entitled to courtesy. She hardly looked like anything, after hours crouched inside ...
— The Barbarians • John Sentry
... what "the gin and whiskey for the mourners alone come to," though I have forgotten. But we lost sight of the ignoble features of the occasion when the sublime office for the Burial of the Dead began. When it was ended I understood one of Betty's brusque remarks, which had puzzled me when it came out ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... to be alone that afternoon in his great bare studio, where no soft background or dim lights conspired to hide her dejection. She had sung badly. She knew it, but she could not answer such a brusque attack, could not defend herself against ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... him to drink, with one hand holding the pannikin to his brother's mouth and with the other supporting the dying head. Twice he gulped at it, then with a brusque motion of his wasted arm he knocked the cup aside, spilling the ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... remark Unless it be a friendly call From soldiers walking in the Mall, Or the impertinence of pugs Stretched at their ease on carriage rugs. For thou art sturdy and thy fur Is rougher than the prickly burr, Thy manners brusque, thy deep "bow wow" (Inherited, but Lord knows how!) Far other than the frenzied yaps That emanate from ladies' laps, Thou art, in fact, of doggy size And hast the brown and faithful eyes, So full of love, so void of blame, That fill a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... hospitality. His brother was returned from a visit to Guaymas and Mazatlan, and he had brought wine of the finest and cigars such as Arizona never had known, and Sancho was manifestly disconcerted at the regrets or refusals, coldly courteous on the part of Loring, blunt and brusque on the part of Blake. The veterans, however, saw no harm in going and were sumptuously entertained by mine host in the best room of the ranch. Blake caused a strong guard to be posted at camp, a most unusual thing, and ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... ever felt so queer in my life!" answered Collins, in a melancholy tone, strongly in contrast with his habitual brusque gaiety; "but, as you say, it's no use. The poor lad is dead enough at last, and my only comfort now is to bury him, and ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... earliest wars of the revolution, had been almost continually in command of various Corps during those of the empire; so that it was surprising that he had not yet been awarded the baton of a marshal; withheld perhaps because of his brusque and abrupt manner. His detractors said, after his defeat, that his desire to obtain this coveted honour had driven him, with no more than 20,000 men, to stand rashly in the path of 200,000 of the enemy, with the aim ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... Beth. You've worked too hard. You need rest. That's just what's the matter," he said, in a brusque voice, as he put some medicine on the table ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... a rough hand-shake at first, eh, my lad? But, never mind; it is a brusque way she has," said the ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... years old, in a bright striped skirt and black mask, who from time to time struck me over the shoulders with a regularity and sad persistency that was peculiarly irresistible to me; the more so, as I could not help thinking that it was not half as amusing to herself. Once only did the ordinary brusque gallantry of the Carnival spirit show itself. A man with an enormous pair of horns, like a half-civilized satyr, suddenly seized a young girl and endeavored to kiss her. A slight struggle ensued, in which I fancied I detected ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... At breakfast, if he had won, his behavior was gay and even affectionate; he joked roughly, but still he joked, with Madame Descoings, with Joseph, and with his mother; gloomy, on the contrary, when he had lost, his brusque, rough speech, his hard glance, and his depression, frightened them. A life of debauch and the abuse of liquors debased, day by day, a countenance that was once so handsome. The veins of the face were swollen with blood, the ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... now it bewildered Duncan as he entered on the echo of Spaulding's "Come!" He had apprehended the visage of a thunderstorm, with a rattle of brusque complaints: he encountered Spaulding as he had always seemed: a little, urbane figure with a blank face, the blanker for glasses whose lenses seemed always to catch the light and, glaring, mask the eyes behind them; a prosperous man of affairs, well groomed both as to body and as to mind; a machine ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... after her. She had no theories—at least, she gave utterance to none; she had few thoughts of her own—and gave still fewer of them expression; you might guess at a true notion in her mind, but an abstract idea she could scarcely lay hold of; her speech was very common; her manner rather brusque than gentle; but she could love; she could forget herself; she could be sorry for what she did or thought wrong; she could hope; she could wish to be better; she could admire good people; she could trust in God her Saviour. And now the loving ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... Filippino Lippi and Botticelli. But their angels were winged and clothed like acolytes; the Madonna was seated on a rich throne or under a canopy, with altar-candles, wreaths of roses, flowering lilies. It is characteristic of Michelangelo to adopt a conventional motive, and to treat it with brusque originality. In this picture there are no accessories to the figures, and the attendant angels are Tuscan lads half draped in succinct tunics. The style is rather that of a flat relief in stone than ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... on him, but wild and extravagant, courting adventures and dangers, and with a very strange, short, rough manner, an exaggeration of that short manner of speaking which his poor brother had. He is shy in society, which makes him still more brusque, and he does not know (never having been out of his own country or even out in Society) what to say to the number of people who are presented to him here, and which is, I know from experience, a most odious thing. He is truly ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... upon the figure which had arrested the attention of Maverick,—a lady of, may-be, forty years, fashionably, but gracefully attired, with olive-brown complexion, hair still glossy black, and attended by a strange gentleman with a brusque and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... our betrothal in the Rectory of Veilbye. My future father-in-law spoke to the text, "I gave my handmaid into thy bosom" (Genesis xvi, 5). His words touched my heart. I had not believed that this serious and sometimes brusque man could talk so sweetly. When the solemnity was over, I received the first kiss from my sweet betrothed, and the assurance of her great ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... also followed to hounds, felt his heart glow to see how well the boy was received; for Ishmael's surly shyness had passed into a new phase, expressed by a rather charming deference mingled with independence which appealed to the brusque, goodhearted members of the "county," who went to make up the very mixed hunt ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... times to change for better means if they could be found; but never to cease striking. Halleck was worried by being jogged to new enterprises, but heartily supported them when once begun. C.F. Smith had a brusque manner, but a warm heart. He was direct and honest as a child. He seemed impetuous, but his outburst was a rush of controlled power. He was a thorough soldier, an enthusiast in his profession, the soul of honor, the type ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force
... one reason why I spoke to you just now," he said, much more gently than usual. "I knew that she was a little brusque sometimes; and I suppose I am not much better. As a rule a father does not talk to his girls as I have been talking to you, I fancy. I am almost as ignorant of a father's duties to his daughter as you say you are of the habits of English bourgeois society—for I suppose ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... actresses, and, in the end, you have put us off with a wretched story about the parvenu DABCHICK. For my part, I refuse to admit your authority until you prove, in greater detail, that you really know something of the subject on which you presumed to write." "Sir," I reply, "you are brusque, and somewhat offensive in the style you use towards me. For my part I do not admit that you are entitled to an answer from me, and I have felt disposed to pass you by in silence. But since there may be other weak vessels of your sort, I will do violence to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various
... wonder, perhaps, at this buoyancy of temperament, that enabled me to get over so quickly the disappointment and dejection I was suffering from at Mrs Clyde's brusque rejection ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... with a heart of gold!" was his mental comment; then he spoke abruptly, and his voice sounded brusque though his ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... conversion of human beings into real property,[163] and closed with a touching appeal for the retention of the act complained of, so that slaves "might not at the same time be real estate in some respects, personal in others, and bothe in others!" History does not record that the brusque old king was at all moved by this earnest appeal and convincing argument of ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... brusque response. 'I've hed enuff of Sleepy Hollow, an' bein' ordered round by an old man with his head in the moon. It's "Lemuel, do this," an' before I git started it's "Lemuel, do the t'other thing." You kin stand it ef you're a ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... interpreted with a very sensitive restraint, was comparatively obvious—a commonplace, indeed, of these heart-rending days. There was a far more subtle and original note of pathos in the contrast between the brusque humour of the man's casual acceptance of the situation and the timorous, adoring, dog-like devotion of the woman. Here tears and laughter were ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... through it. RASCH resolved, now or never, to finish the speech he commenced yesterday. House, after protest, settles down to listen. Seems KAY SHUTTLEWORTH been "saying things" about the warrior. "He behaved towards me," said the Major, "in a manner that would be brusque on the part of Providence addressing a black beetle." House undecided as to which simile more happily bestowed. On the whole, agreed more polite to contemplate U. KAY SHUTTLEWORTH as Providence, than Major RASCH as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 25, 1893 • Various
... If you know why I am here, you must know that I cannot take such a message, that I cannot go—without her. For Heaven's sake, Miss Lorton, go and fetch her! There is no time to lose. Her—my happiness is at stake. I beg your pardon; I'm afraid I'm brusque; but——For Heaven's sake, bring her! If I could see her, speak to ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... Kentucky of Virginia parentage, married to a Southern woman, accustomed from boyhood to the narrow circumstances of the poor, and still unused to the ways of the great, was called to the American Presidency. He was not brusque and warlike as Jackson had been; he was a kindly philosopher, a free-thinker in religion at the head of an orthodox people, or peoples. A shrewd judge of human character and the real friend of the poor and the dependent, Lincoln, like his aristocratic prototype, Thomas ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... from an illiterate man, belonging, as I knew from previous inquiry, to rather an exceptional class of individuals in America, I did not suffer my mind to be biassed, although I could see that many of the passengers were not disposed to view the matter in the same light. He was a brusque and uncouth man, of swaggering gait, about forty years of age, above the middle stature, and soon let the captain and crew know, by his authoritative manner and volubility of tongue, that he was chief in command on the occasion. No one seemed, however, ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... you'd one donkey already in your party—careering around the desert with a little girl like this," he vouchsafed, and Arlee's eyes widened at his brusque nod at her. She was staring about her now with a curious interest, for all her aching tiredness, gazing wonderingly at the dazzling white walls with their strange and brilliant paintings. She saw they were in a long, deep chamber, from which other openings ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... own chemist could make up, he had expedients of treatment that never occurred to any other man, and then he had a way with him that used to bring people up from the gates of death and fill despairing relatives with hope. His arrival in the sick room, a little man, with brusque, sharp, straightforward manner, seemed in itself to change the whole face of things and beat back the tides of disease. He would not hear that any disease was serious, but he treated it as if it were; he would not allow a gloomy face in a sick room, and his language to women ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... This worthy clergyman had seemed, if his memory was to be trusted, to have been the shining centre of a group whose life threw the life of young Athens, as represented by Plato, into the shade. The man in question seemed, in later years, a sturdily built clergyman, slow and cautious of speech, brusque and even grim of address, sensible, devoted to commonplace activities, and with a due appreciation of the comforts and conveniences of life. His conversation had no suggestiveness or subtlety. He was grumpy in the morning ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Katherine, I don't mean any harm, and you must not think anything of my brusque speeches. As you know, there is a tinge of skepticism in me which I can not help, and my ideals are so much higher than the realities of life, that I am always painfully ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... let you. It makes me nervous to have somebody hanging over my shoulder and maybe jogging my elbow. If you're to stay you must sit," was the brusque but not unkindly answer. ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... Mihalevitch did not get on; his noisy talk and brusque manners scared the German, who was unused to such behaviour. One poor devil detects another by instinct at once, but in old age he rarely gets on with him, and that is hardly astonishing, he has nothing to share ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... official, and his enthusiastic devotion to the clients whose causes he championed, challenged the most careful scrutiny. He was then unmarried, forty-four years old, tall, stoutly-built, with a large head, dark brown hair, clear keen eyes, and a generous and kindly nature concealed under a slightly brusque manner. His sturdy old-fashioned rectitude, and the just conviction that by taste and adaptability for public life he had peculiar qualifications for the great office of governor, commended him to popular confidence. In Buffalo, where he had lived for a ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... sixty-nine years old, a tall, robust, vigorous man with a stern face of remarkable vulgar strength. The illiteracy of his youth survived; he could not write the simplest words correctly, and his speech was a brusque medley of slang, jargon, dialect and profanity. It was said of him that he could swear more forcibly, variously and frequently than any other man of his generation. Like the Astors, he was cynical, distrustful, ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... house," said Bertha, in brusque invitation. "It isn't ship-shape yet. I wanted to do it all myself, but I find it's a big proposition to go up against. It sure is. But I like it. I'd like nothing better than running a big hotel—not too big, but just big enough. I tell the Captain that when our mines ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... had ever seen in him looked like such knowledge, but that did not make the son quite sure, for the old butler's remark about the Colonel's suavity was just; his elaborate manners made Stephen almost brusque at times, and aroused a secret antagonism in both, so that they sometimes met one another with armor on, and Stephen's keen thrust would occasionally penetrate the shield which his father skilfully interposed between ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... he carried eccentricity to an extravagant extent, was brusque and curt in speech, often to the verge of insult, laconic in his despatches, and—a soldier in grain—treated with stinging sarcasm all whose lack of activity or of courage invited his contempt. It was by this spirit that he incurred the enmity of the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... clerks' room and moves towards the outer office. FALDER does not move. RUTH puts out her hand timidly. He shrinks back from the touch. She turns and goes miserably into the clerks' room. With a brusque movement he follows, seizing her by the shoulder just inside the doorway. COKESON shuts ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Cargrim was idling about, in the hope of picking up some crumbs of information, when Graham took his departure. But the little doctor, who was not in the best of tempers for another conversation, shot past the chaplain like a bolt from the bow; and by the time Cargrim recovered from such brusque treatment was half-way down the avenue, fuming and fretting at his inability to understand the attitude of Bishop Pendle. Dr Graham loved a secret as a magpie does a piece of stolen money, and he was simply frantic to find out what vexed his friend; the more so as he believed ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... hours finding him. They did not want to let me see him. But I implored—said that I was engaged to his sister—and finally I got in. The nurse was very sympathetic. But I didn't care for the doctors in charge. They seemed hard, hurried, brusque. But they have their troubles. The hospital was a long barracks, and it was ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... oppose the will of civil governments. Are we to understand by that, that the chief of the Papal States abhors as a Pope what he does as a sovereign? that in the one capacity he protests against what he allows in the other? No, no," continued this brusque assailant, "It is too late to talk in that way. If the Church of Rome really approve of religious liberty,—of such principles as those which govern England,—where are her protests and her efforts against intolerance and persecution where she still retains ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... these. Such a character as his could not but be quick to feel the surrounding atmosphere, whether it was of love or of suspicion. So, he had to harden himself against what naturally had a great effect upon him, the estimate which he felt that people round him were making of him. There was nothing brusque, rough, contemptuous in his brushing aside these popular judgments. He gave them all due weight, and yet he felt, 'From all that this lowest tribunal may decide, there are two appeals, one to my own conscience, and one ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... 'Rather brusque in his manner, perhaps,' observed Jawleyford, who was quite the 'lady' himself. 'I wonder what he was?' added he, fingering ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... with wondering eyes. It was simply incredible that this brusque, matter-of-fact young woman whom she had held in secret contempt should be the daughter of a man whose name was known and honored throughout the newspaper world. Sheer astonishment ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... emporter dans sa marche irresistible; mais la vie des individus et des peuples est devenue pour elle une chose sacree. Elle transforme plutot qu'elle ne detruit les choses qui s'opposent a son developpement; elle procede par absorption graduelle plutot que par brusque execution; elle aime a conquerir par l'influence den idees plutot que par la force des armes, un peuple, une classe, une institution qui resiste an progres.— VACHEROT, Essais de Philosophie Critique, 443. Peu a peu l'homme intellectuel finit par ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... offended, penitent. I had possibly committed unwittingly a breach of good breeding, according to French ideas, which almost justified the brusque severity of ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... conversation back to his book; but there was a little touch of scorn in her voice, as if she thought to herself, "I suppose he is one of those people who can only talk on one subject—his own doings." Her manner was almost brusque. ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... in answering, but the interval of reflection had soothed her irritation, and blunted her animosity. Her reply was neither brusque nor rude, it leant rather to conventionalism than to originality, and she used, after all, those phrases which have been commonplaces in such circumstances, since man first asked and woman first refused. She thanked ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... with sympathy for Christophe. The big boy of sixteen, serious and solitary, who had such lofty ideas of his duty, inspired a sort of respect in them all. His fits of ill-temper, his obstinate silences, his gloomy air, his brusque manner, were not surprising in such a house as that. Frau Vogel, herself, who regarded every artist as a loafer, dared not reproach him aggressively, as she would have liked to do, with the hours that he spent in star-gazing in the evening, leaning, motionless, out of the attic window ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... an hour passed well enough. But soon it was observable that Mrs. P. was drinking glass after glass of wine, to an extent few gentlemen did, even then, and soon that she was actually excited by it. Before this, her manner had been brusque, if not contemptuous, towards her new acquaintance; now it became, towards my mother especially, quite rude. Presently she took up some slight remark made by my mother, which, though, it did not naturally mean ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the Baron de Krudener, who resided in a large house built by Thomas Swann, a wealthy Baltimorean. Amicable relations with "our ancient ally," France, had been interrupted by the brusque demand of General Jackson for the payment of the indemnity. Monsieur Serruvier was recalled, leaving the Legation in charge of Alphonso Pageot, the Secretary. He also was recalled, but after the Jackson Administration ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... of the South more than I can tell. I do not know as they are naturally more gentle and kind-hearted than Northerners, but they are certainly more courteous and chivalrous, despite their quick tempers and more passionate dispositions. Northerners are too brusque. If they ask pardon for rudeness, they do it as if they regretted the breath spent in uttering the words. It is quite the opposite ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... after that, he has nothing more to do with God.” Whether he had studied Descartes or not, he evidently did not share the enthusiasm of Arnauld and others for his philosophy. He even spoke of it as “useless, uncertain, and troublesome—nay, as ridiculous.” {177} He has added, in that brusque, rapid, forceful style characteristic of many of his Thoughts, that “he did not think the whole of philosophy worth an hour’s trouble.” Again: “To set light by philosophy is the true philosophy.” When we look at such expressions, and many others, it is not to be wondered ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... of the confessional. Fate saved me from playing the part Vane had assigned me in this vulgar comedy, dragged me from my entanglement, flung me on my feet again. She was a little brusque in the process; but I do not feel inclined to blame the kind lady for that. The mud was creeping upward fast, and a quick ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... sar, an' he come close to dis place," one of them chattered in reply to Rolfe's brusque demand. "Den he go some place we no can find, an' we see dis station fence. We no t'ink ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... front rank of the fighters. He adopted as his motto in life "Onwards"—the watchword of his old school at Newcastle, emblazoned on the back of the prizes which he took in far-off days; and from first to last he lived up to it. Brusque he sometimes was, decisive always; perhaps he was too easily ruffled in little affairs, but he was magnanimous to the point of self-sacrifice in great. After quitting, under circumstances entirely honourable ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... in Eskimo land to indulge in ceremonious salutation. Okiok was naturally a straightforward and brusque man. It will not therefore surprise any one to be told that he began ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... never tire of making those silly speeches?" she asked, lifting her gray eyes candidly to my face. "Excuse me, you need not answer: I am very brusque. You see I did not expect to find any one here, and consequently left my company manners at home. I am sorry to have disturbed you," she continued, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... mon baton et sur la grande route J'irai et je dirai aux anes, mes amis: Je suis Francois Jammes et je vais au Paradis, Car il n'y a pas d'enfer au pays du Bon Dieu. Je leur dirai: Venez, doux amis du ciel bleu, Pauvres betes cheries qui d'un brusque mouvement d'oreilles, Chassez les mouches plates, les coups ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... The American answer was brusque, and resentful of the attempt of the Allies to dictate the attitude neutrals should take toward submarines which visited their harbors. The governments of France, Great Britain, Russia, and Japan were informed that they had not "set forth any circumstances, nor is the Government ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... looked up quickly, as if he did not quite understand the brusque ways of his new acquaintance, who put his questions so directly. But the new acquaintance seemed good-humored and quite at his ease, and evidently had not the least idea of being rude or over-inquisitive. He had only the way of one apparently used ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... sheltering himself at times from the sun with the serape which he drew over his head. He felt instinctively and with the power of conviction that the Mexicans would not depart. The coming of Cos had taken the hope from him. Cos! He hated the short, brusque name. ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Mr. Timbs, in his "London and Westminster," Mrs. Black, the wife of the editor of the Morning Chronicle, when asked if she remembered any heads on Temple Bar, used to reply, in her brusque, hearty way, "Boys, I recollect the scene well! I have seen on that Temple Bar, about which you ask, two human heads—real heads—traitors' heads—spiked on iron poles. There were two; I saw one fall (March 31, 1772). Women shrieked ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... you can't marry us both," said the marquis, replying to Laurence; "and the time has come," he continued, in the brusque tone of a man who is struck to the heart, ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... address to her. Mildred looked at him again. He was better dressed than the others, and an air of success in his face made him seem younger than he was. He leaned across the table, and Mildred liked his brusque, but withal well-bred manner. She wondered what his pictures were like. At Daveau's only the names of the principal exhibitors at the Salon were known, and he had told her that he had not sent there for the ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... the scene of our day's work, Area Number Fourteen. We are now far advanced in company training. The barrack square is a thing of the past. Commands are no longer preceded by cautions and explanations. A note on a whistle, followed by a brusque word or gesture, is sufficient to set us ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... overcome when he found he could depend upon the individuals as well as upon the companies. Several stories are told of his encounters in repartee with his soldiers, in which he did not always have the upper hand, despite his rank. Brusque in manner, he yet had a saving sense of humor that had to be drawn upon to carry off situations that would have been intolerable in ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... was looked upon with fear by all the villagers. Her manner was brusque, her speech sharp, and her criticism of neglectful mothers caustic and much to the point. Prim, always in black bonnet and jet-trimmed cape of years gone by, both in summer and winter, she took no heed of the vagaries of fashion, even when they ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... Jacob, but too fat, and far too brusque in speech, especially to the young. I'll warrant me he has been addressing upbraiding words to you, finding fault, perhaps, with your manners and ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... is what took my fancy in you, Willis: that generosity, that real gentleness, in spite of the brusque way you have. Refinement of the ...
— A Likely Story • William Dean Howells
... Sawdy put a brusque end to this uncertainty: "She's down there at the Mountain House waitin'—seen her myself ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... was on the hearth rug. Mrs. Travers was in a chair, a portly woman with a not unkindly face, but the brusque manner many Englishwomen acquire after forty. She held Sara Lee's hand and gave her a complete if ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... main loss of power would lie in the family itself. It would be no longer possible to front the political dogmatist of the hearth-rug with a social and religious dogmatism as brusque and unreasonable as his own. The balance of power which woman has slowly built up in home would be roughly disturbed, and new forms of social and domestic life would emerge from the chaos of such a revolution. From sweeping ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... was going to say "rude," but knew better when she saw me waiting for it—"well, you are rather brusque, as we used to call it abroad, Miss Castlewood; but am I ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... Frederick the Great was the death of the Tsarina Elizabeth (1762) and the accession to the Russian throne of Peter III, a dangerous madman but a warm admirer of the military prowess of the Prussian king. Peter in brusque style transferred the Russian forces from the standard of Maria Theresa to that of Frederick and restored to Prussia the conquests of his predecessor. [Footnote: Peter III was dethroned in the same ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... answered in a deep and even voice. At the first brusque sound of my grandmother's voice his eyebrows faintly quivered. Surely he had not expected her to address ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... of old in their enforcement of obedience and conservation of morals. The second was Captain L.M. Goldsborough, a man of stalwart height and proportions and a presence that ennobled command; learned and accomplished, yet gruff and overwhelming in speech and brusque and impatient in manner, but possessing, withal, a kindly nature, and a keen sense of humor that took in a joke enjoyably, however practical; and a sympathetic discrimination that often led him to condone moral offences at which some of the straight-laced professors stood aghast. ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... But only Cleve was aware of the skill with which the man worked. The gradual application of pressure; the careful moving forward from bog to bog with the path of retreat always open. From sharpness to brusqueness. From the brusque to the harsh. From ...
— The Terrible Answer • Arthur G. Hill
... Houghton had large business interests in common, and at Mr. Ainsley's request the young man had called upon his daughter. She was pleased with him, although she felt herself to be immeasurably older than he. Mrs. Willoughby had also been favorably impressed by his fine appearance and slightly brusque manner. ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... near him, the lovely hand he had so often to direct, and almost to guide, and all the other perfections of mind and body this enchanting girl possessed, crept in at his admiring eyes, and began to steal into his very veins, and fill him with soft complacency. His brusque manner dissolved away, and his voice became low and soft, whenever he was in her delicious presence. He spoke softly to Jael even, if Grace was there. The sturdy ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... as far as I dare go!" our lieutenant said, with a brusque gesture which bade the chauffeur stop. But before the car turned, he gave us a moment to take in the picture of grandeur and unforgivable cruelty. Yes, unforgivable! for you know, Padre, there was no military motive in the destruction. The only object was to deprive ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a brusque denial. Extracting compliments from the talk of a shy young Westerner was ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... shores, and that it was for this reason that he had never returned to England; but Mark Brand himself always spoke as if his health were too weak, his nerves too delicate, to bear the rough breezes of his own country and the brusque manners of his compatriots. He had brought up his son according to his own ideas; and the result did not seem entirely satisfactory. Vague rumors occasionally reached Beaminster of scrapes and scandals in which the young Brands figured; it was said that Wyvis was a particularly black sheep, ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... to Elizabeth; and knowing her history, she tried very often to help her, and put her in the right way of doing things. At first she found her rather short and unapproachable, and could get nothing but "yes" or "no" from her; and there was something almost offensive in the brusque way in which she would turn with an impatient flush from her mentor when she sometimes didn't understand what was meant, and would do the thing in her own way. She wouldn't see at first the various little good turns which the other did her in her quiet, considerate ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... coolness and inclined to immobility. He lingered awhile, as if irresolute. Schomberg, at the door, looking out, affected perfect indifference. He could not keep it up, though. Suddenly he turned inward and asked with brusque rage: ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... visage scintilant with Lucifer's own beauty—and Lana, her proud head drooping, and her sad, young eyes fixed on me—Oh, Euan!" She stood pressing down both eyelids with her fingers, motionless; then, with a quick-drawn breath and a brusque gesture, flung her arms wide and let them drop to her sides. "How can men follow what they call their 'fortune,' headlong, unheeding, ranging through the world as a hot-jowled hound ranges for rabbits? Are they never satiated? Are they never done with the ruthless madness? Does the endless ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... more religious than almost any other body of men, and they like powerful excitement; but they are always severely decorous. In his behaviour toward his social superiors the fisherman is rugged—perhaps morbidly rugged—but his brusque familiarity is not offensive. To touch his cap would be impossible to him, but his direct salute is neither self-assertive nor impolite. The fisherman toils on till the time comes for him to stay ashore always. His life is a very risky one, and the history of every village is largely made up of ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... however fascinating they may be. I have business in Naples—it claims my first and best attention. When it is transacted I may possibly try a few frivolities for a change—at present I am unfit for the society of the fair sex—an old battered traveler as you see, brusque, and unaccustomed to polite lying. But I promise you I will practice suave manners and a court bow for the countess when I can spare time to call upon her. In the meanwhile I trust to you to make her a suitable and graceful apology for ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... the first Helena did not treat the Dictator with the same brusque spirit of camaraderie which she showed to most of her friends. Her admiration for the public man, if it had been very enthusiastic, was very sincere. She had, from the first time that Ericson's name began to appear ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... domineering and brusque personality, had ably administered the War Department under Lincoln and Johnson. During the controversy between the President and Congress, Stanton had remained in the Cabinet but was closely in touch with his chief's ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... difficult also to see wherein the character of Mittler is reminiscent of Sterne. Mittler is introduced with the obvious purpose of representing certain opinions and of aiding the development of the story by his insistence upon them. He represents a brusque, practical kind of benevolence, and his eccentricity lies only in the extraordinary occupation which he has chosen for himself. Riemann also traces to Sterne, Fielding and their German followers, ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... account for it, and offer some apology for my brusque behaviour, when I was challenged to the confession I ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... apprehensions. He must know something of her thoughts, have a token from her of some feeling like his own; and, waiting, he stopped the Italian on the stairs. The latter knew his purpose immediately, without a spoken word; and he followed Howat's brusque gesture to his room. He hastily wrote a note; and the latter brought him back a reply, only partly satisfactory, with an air of relish. For the first time the affair had the hateful appearance of an intrigue, like a court adventure. ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... artist!' she said, her voice perceptibly less harsh and brusque than it had been when speaking to my companion. 'Hope nothing and ask nothing until you may have ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Verdi's instrumentation, and in his shameless Salvation Army rhythms; and it is sometimes (as in the Priest's solo with chorus in the last scene of the second act) odiously vulgar. "Aida" is more dramatic than "Traviata," has more of Verdi's brusque energy, less of his sentimentality; but it has none of the youthful freshness of his latest work. The young Verdi has already aged—how long will ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... too, as genius does overdo things; was brusque, entirely immersed in his great scheme. Sometimes he even laughed to himself over this. "They don't know what I'm up to!" he would declare to himself, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... her brusque petulance in arms again; she hated that he should imagine she had sacrificed her fete-day to Leon Ramon, because the artist-trooper was dear to him; she hated him to suppose that she had waited ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... was ashamed of having been brusque with her. For she was only a little slip of a girl after all and obviously one who had never been thrown out into the current of life where it ran strongest. More than ever she made him think of the girl of olden times, the girl hard ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... you have come several thousands of miles in order to preach the Gospel, is not sufficient to place you unquestionably on a pedestal. By temperament you are either impetuous or slow, easy-going or exacting, courteous or brusque, and you will prove to be by nature more or less reasonable or unreasonable when the Chinaman seeks to make you understand li, an untranslatable word, which embodies the idea of the complete range of all that it is suitable that you should be ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... you not somewhat brusque and uncourteous in your demeanor?" Vane demanded, with some hauteur. "Who are you, and what ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... light, bright surges of sound, sinking at the last into cradled restfulness. Without pause or transition she passed on to Grieg; the wistful, remote appeal of the strangely misnamed "Erotique," plaintive, solemn, and in the fulfillment almost hymnal: the brusque pursuing minors of the wedding music, and the diamond-shower of notes of the sun-path song, bleak, piercing, Northern sunlight imprisoned in melody. Then, the majestic swing of ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... in time to sort our invitations. 'First,' he said, 'just you and Terry' (he was one of those brusque new world types and Theresa rather enjoyed his familiarity—'so refreshing,' I remember she said) 'sit right down and I'll tell you all about literature in ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... a little, gray, bent, brusque German, greeted him with absent-minded smile, remarked briefly upon his good health, and then they set to work. In thirty seconds he had forgotten the desert, the face of Viola, all his energies concentrated ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... raised a pair of deep blue eyes. Following upon a sigh, he thrust his papers aside with a brusque movement of relief. Then he raised a hand to his broad forehead and smoothed his disheveled fair hair, which seemed to have undergone some upheaval as a result of the mental disturbance his efforts had inspired in the brain beneath. The handsome ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... nose twitched that she may get into the saddle before the usual kicking scene commences; once there, he may do what he likes, she is part of her horse, and enjoys his gambols as much as himself. When in female garments, though somewhat brusque in manners and blunt in speech, she is a true woman, and as feminine in heart as the fairest and most delicate among the sex. Madame, the governess, must occupy our attention the next. She was the kindest, best, most loving guardian ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... her. She desired yet she feared to see him again so soon. She felt an anguish which an unknown sentiment, profoundly soft, appeased. She did not feel the stupor of the first time that she had yielded for love; she did not feel the brusque vision of the irreparable. She was under influences slower, more vague, and more powerful. This time a charming reverie bathed the reminiscence of the caresses which she had received. She was full of trouble and anxiety, but she felt no regret. She had acted less through her will ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
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