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More "Curtness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... precincts of the camp. From these purely ornamental occupations he had returned in a condition approximating to collapse, without desire and without hope. The invincible cheerfulness of unseen men chanting music-hall songs in the drenched night made no impression on him, nor the terrible staccato curtness of a N.C.O. mounting guard. Volition had gone out of him; his heart was as ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... of him," admitted the visitor in his slow, painstaking tone, which yet had a certain curtness ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... mountains), he lost a few moments in confusion. The dogman could not go without any answer; and how was any good answer to be given in half an hour, at the utmost? A time had been when the lawyer studied curtness and precision under minds of abridgment in London. But the more he had labored to introduce rash brevity into Yorkshire, and to cut away nine words out of ten, when all the ten meant one thing only, the more of contempt for his ignorance he won, and the less money he made out of it. And no sooner ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... not notice the curtness of the reply, or he chose to ignore it, for the next instant, noting the gasp of pain and the sudden tightening of the lips that accompanied her attempt to raise her foot to the stirrup, he swung lightly to the ground, and before she divined ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... George's curtness was accounted for by the fact that he had been afraid of saying too much, but Sylvia carelessly handed ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... Curtness in letter-writing does not necessarily indicate oddity. It often is the most judicious method of avoiding interminable correspondence. When one of Bishop Thorold's clergy wrote to beg leave of absence from his duties in order that he might make a long tour ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... Sarah Bernhardt nothing would have given him more pleasure, but, with a playful wink, "I am leaving for Portland in a few days, and I am afraid she will have left Boston when I come back"—thus cutting the Gordian (k)not with a snap. But, evidently regretting his curtness, he said, "Tell her if she is at liberty to-morrow I will offer her a cup of tea." Then he added: "You must come and chaperon me. It would not do to leave me alone with such a dangerous and captivating visitor." He invited Mr. Howells and Oliver Wendell Holmes to meet ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... people had ever seen the stern lines of that face relax in light-hearted laughter since the death of his young wife, which had occurred a few years after the birth of Adrien. None, outside his immediate family circle, had ever known the curtness of his speech to be softened unless in sarcasm; and his habitual expression was one of ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... was returning, Beatrice and her aunt departed for a whirl in Florida, with a laconic invitation that Steve and his father-in-law follow them. Steve declined the invitation with alarming curtness. ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... had changed so much, he spoke with such curtness and even with such contempt, that Mrs. Cosham looked at him fairly puzzled. Happily she belonged to a generation which expected uncouthness in its men, and she merely felt convinced that this Mr. Denham was very, very clever. She took back her Shakespeare, as Denham seemed to ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... Mrs. Forbes," he said with nervous curtness. "When a stupor attacks children it is a very bad sign I am told. I'll just ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... certain abruptness in Philip's tone, if not in his words, which made Kinraid look in his face with surprise, and answer with equal curtness. ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... senator sitting underneath him, he had the satisfaction to see that every one was silent and listening with deep attention. He seemed to enjoy annoying the senator, and he had the satisfaction of seeing that the senator was visibly annoyed. Ratcliffe looked sternly at the baron and said, with some curtness, that he saw no reason to ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... the costly fabric was reared,—all these qualities of the orator demand and receive our sincere applause. In an age when indolence or the study of French models has reduced our sentences to the economic curtness of telegraphic despatches, to the dimension of the epigram without its point, Mr. Choate is one of the few whose paragraphs echo with the long-resounding pace of Dryden's coursers, and who can drive a predicate and six ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... curtness in the two words. Bill permitted himself a brief survey of the great man's back as the latter turned towards the front door. And although his half-closed lids hid the expression of his eyes, the pursing of the lips and the fluctuating muscles of his jaw spoke of unpleasant thoughts ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... at the note and said, "Yes," and Primrose, courtesying, stole out softly. But afterwards the game was ended with a good deal of curtness on Mrs. Ferguson's part, who had lost; for, while people were strenuous enough on some points, no one disdained ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... care, as any other part of the contents. There are probably very few among American magazine readers who do not habitually look through the advertising pages, with the certainty that they will be entertained by the beauty of the advertiser's illustrations and the quaint curtness of his phrases. Another reason is that the American monthly magazine goes to all parts of the United States, while, owing to the time required for long journeys on even the swiftest trains, no American daily paper can have so general a circulation as The Times in the United Kingdom. In comparison ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... down the lines of chatting women for the girl who had tempted him to his first dance in many months. He had seen Pollard's team, but he had not seen Pollard or his niece. Broderick watched him, smiling a little. "Have a drink, Buck?" he asked, seeming not to have noticed the other's curtness of word and manner. "I've ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... displayed no interest in the matter. But when the lawyer, with a fatherly solicitude of his own, suggested that it would be safer if he took care of her money for her, she rejected the proposal with an uncommon, haughty curtness. He seemed somewhat hurt, but he did not press the matter. The detective ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... am often comparing his rather touchingly inflated naivete as of a small young person walking on tiptoe while he is talking of elevated things, at the time when he felt himself the author of that unwritten romance, with his present epigrammatic curtness and affectation of power kept strictly in reserve. His paragraphs now seem to have a bitter smile in them, from the consciousness of a mind too penetrating to accept any other man's ideas, and too equally competent in all directions to seclude his power in any one form of creation, ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... had spoken with a curtness to which his friend's particular manner of overlooking it only added significance. "They've become," she pursued, "superficial or insincere or frivolous, but at least they've become, with the way the drag's put on, quite as dull ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... accompanied it. Nobody is now left to think much of Bradshaw, but in 1654 he was an excellent representative of the class Carlyle was fond of describing as the alors celebre. Prompted by this desire, Milton must have written to Marvell hinting, as he well knew how to do, his surprise at the curtness of his friend's former communication, and Marvell's reply to this letter has come down to us. It is Marvell's glory that long before Paradise Lost he recognised the essential greatness of the blind secretary, and his letter ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... almost reached Nannie's before David said that—that he was afraid he would have to go away a month before he had planned. When he was most in earnest, his usual brevity of speech fell into a curtness that might have seemed, to one who did not know him, indifference. Elizabeth did know him, but even to her the ensuing explanation, which did not explain, was, through his very anxiety not to offend ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... him so little that I can hardly venture to make any remarks on the impression which I received from his conversation, with regard to the character of his mind. Notwithstanding his general reserve and curtness of speech, on two or three occasions he showed himself to possess quite a quick and vivid fancy, and even a certain share of humor. I have heard him tell stories remarkably well. One tale, especially, which related to a dream he had in early life, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... his cousin. "Dear Abel,—We all hope that Emily will be happy, though of course we regret the marriage." The father, though he had not himself written triumphantly, or even hopefully,—as fathers are wont to write when their daughters are given away in marriage,—was wounded by the curtness and unkindness of the baronet's reply, and at the moment declared to himself that he would never go to Herefordshire any more. But on the following day there came a worse blow than Sir Alured's single line. Emily, not in the least doubting but that her request ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... right now, I think," he said, with an immediate return to curtness. It steadied her as no other attitude on ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... see you," said the man, returning from his second visit to the room above. Even the servant spoke with a curtness that could not be mistaken. It meant dismissal, cold and decisive, with no explanation, ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... is something contradictory about this man and his curtness invites. He seems to have accepted the presence of the newspaper man in an odd way, an uncity way. After a pause he gestures slightly with his pipe in his ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... language in the making, its crude, vital, material. It is often an effective school of moral description, a palliative for profanity, and expresses the natural craving for superlatives. Faults are hit off and condemned with the curtness sententiousness of proverbs devised by youth to sanctify itself and correct its own faults. The pedagogue objects that it violates good form and established usage, but why should the habits of hundreds of years ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... Evidently for the moment I was out of her books, and while I did not understand in what way I had displeased her, for we always had met amicably before, I seized upon this sign of displeasure on her part as explanatory, perhaps, of the curtness and show of contradictory feelings on the part of her dependent niece. Yet why should the old woman frown on me? I had been told more than once that she regarded me with great favour. Had I unwittingly done something to displease her, or had the game of cards she had just ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... to press till 12.30," remarked Peppermore, unperturbed by this curtness. "Perhaps by then you can give me more news, Mr. Superintendent? Murdered! The Mayor of Hathelsborough! Now that's something that's unique in the history of the town, I believe. I was looking over the records not so long since, and I don't remember coming across any ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... a thing for which there is no evidence. When Johnson silenced Boswell's chatter with the words, 'Sir, we know our will is free and there's an end on't,' he expressed a great truth in language not the less philosophically accurate on account of its colloquial curtness. The consciousness possessed by an agent about to perform an act, that he is at liberty to perform it or not, is really conclusive evidence that the act is free. For it matters not a jot whether consciousness be 'an independent faculty,' or whether—as, Mr. Buckle ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... suggested nervous energy, but when advisable, he could assume the bovine stolidity which, though foreign to his real nature, the Canadian bushman occasionally adopts for diplomatic purposes. Thurston, however, still retained certain traits of the Insular Briton, including a curtness of speech ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... more to it. Something,—Leif's curtness, or the touch of Valbrand's hand upon his naked shoulder,—roused Alwin's madness afresh. Shaking off the hand, fighting it off, he bearded the ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... think him disinterested, and therefore trustworthy," Mrs. Gould said, with the nearest approach to curtness it was in ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... short conversation which always took place before he was made to stand with his back to the abbess's open door, he coldly inquired about the good lady's condition during the past night, and made one or two observations thereon with a brevity almost amounting to curtness. ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
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