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More "Downright" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stockings hanging from her hand, and fell again to listening to Erik. His word made an endless echo in her head.... "Perins a droll species. A sort of indomitable ass. Refuses to succumb to his intelligence. If you think he's in love with your Mary you're a downright imbecile. The man adjusts his passions to his phrases as neatly as a pretty woman pulling on her stockings...." She didn't like Erik to refer to pretty women pulling on their stockings. What an idiot! If Erik wanted to he could go out and help all the pretty women in ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... health. To frighten such young men into believing themselves diseased, when in reality they experience nothing but what may occasionally occur in the experiences of any robust, healthy man, is the most detestable, downright quackery. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... came to hand, I was sitting at dinner, after a most noble chase, in the midst of my friends, all men of the right sort, downright hearty good fellows. The cloth was removed, and we had just sung, Bright Phoebus had mounted his chariot of day, when my servant Jonathan came in ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... be utterly wrong, absolutely immoral, downright wicked, to forego it," Alice declaimed, with energy. "It would be nothing ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... at her. She had fairly fallen in love with this new cousin of hers; her beauty, and gracious ways, her foreign accent, and now her experiences of nuns and convents had come like a revelation to the little English girl in her downright, everyday life. With a comical incongruity, she could compare her in her own mind to nothing but an enchanted princess in some fairy tale; and she stood gazing first at her and then at the glass, where soft wavy brown hair and red and ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... Well, I'm often downright glad grandfather is so fond of his books, and his creatures, and his plants. It does my heart good to see him so happy, sorting them all at home, and so ready to go in search of more, whenever he's ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... her motive in maintaining the alias, though I was certain it was more than a mere whim. How great it was I could not know. Should she persist in it I would help her up to the point of telling Max a downright ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... is too strong For early stomachs, to prove wholesome food; I can't help thinking Juvenal was wrong, Although no doubt his real intent was good, For speaking out so plainly in his song, So much indeed as to be downright rude; And then what proper person can be partial To all those nauseous epigrams ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... look of our eyes, our manner of fetching our breath, the little command we have over our words and actions, how little do all these things indicate a sound mind! What can make a worse appearance than Homer's Achilles, or Agamemnon, during the quarrel. And as to Ajax, anger drove him into downright madness, and was the occasion of his death. Courage, therefore, does not want the assistance of anger; it is sufficiently provided, armed, and prepared of itself. We may as well say that drunkenness, or madness, are of service ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... government, not by a private corporation, and guarded by Japanese soldiers. Of the forty mines, the Japanese have worked their way, in only four years, into all but four. Different methods are used. The simplest is, of course, discrimination in the use of the railway for shipping. Downright refusal to furnish cars while competitors who accepted Japanese partners got them, is one method. Another more elaborate method is to send but one car when a large number is asked for, and then when it is too late to use cars, send the whole number asked for or ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... exact conditions of her father's will was satisfied by the gossip of the newspapers. And nothing amazed her more than the announcement that Dora Dundas, of all people in the world, was to inherit his millions. Thoughts of Dora sent cold shivers down her back. She knew the downright and straightforward nature so well that she could easily imagine the hot indignation flaming in the girl's breast for any wrong or injustice inflicted ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... polygamy. He advised Henry VIII that the right way out of his perplexity was to marry a second wife without repudiating the first. And when the Landgrave Philip asked for leave to do the same thing, Luther gave it on condition that it was denied. He insisted on what he called a downright lie. The great fact which we have to recognise is that with all the intensity of his passion for authority he did more than any single man to make modern History the ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... driven by the extreme cold of the Pleiocene Period to grow a thick fur in his struggle for life. That he grew then a thicker fur, I knew, but that surely does not explain the whole of the Mammoth, with and without a thick fur, before and after the fur. It is really a pity to see for how many of these downright absurdities Darwin is made responsible by the Darwinians. He has clearly shown how in many cases the individual may be modified almost beyond recognition by environment, but the individual must always have been there first. Before ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... the arm. Comfort Christopher; that's what he had got to do. Get rid as quickly as possible of that look of agony—yes, it was downright agony—on ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... in Pieces of this Kind, provided it keeps within the Degrees of Probability; But Mr. de la Bruyere gives us Characters of Men, who are not to be found in Nature; and, out of a false Affectation of the Wonderful, he carries almost every thing to Excess; represents the Irregularities of Life as downright Madness, and by his false Colours ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... caught him praying to be forgiven for having neglected his work as a parish priest," (Miss Galindo was making horrible faces, to keep back tears, squeezing up her eyes in a way which would have amused me at any other time, but when she was speaking of Mr. Gray); "when I see a downright good, religious man, I'm apt to think he's got hold of the right clue, and that I can do no better than hold on by the tails of his coat and shut my eyes, if we've got to go over doubtful places on our road ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... it downright mean, Judge," he complained, "to bring us fellows out here in the hope of havin' a scrimmage and then send the other side word we're here, so they'll be sure not to come! You'll be runnin' on their ticket ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... would not have failed to detect that the Girl took a little less pleasure in her surroundings than she had taken in them before she had made the trip to Monterey. Downright glad, to use her own expression, as she had been on her return to see the boys of the camp and hear their boisterous shouts of welcome when the stage drew up in front of The Polka, she had to acknowledge that her home-coming was not quite what she expected. It ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... understand me, sir," said Denham quietly. "I was not speaking in a figurative way, but in plain, downright English. That really is part of an ancient gold-mine, in which the water has collected ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... the two girls nearer and nearer together; and Peggy found herself yielding more and more—often against her own judgment—to the fascination of the lawless girl, who on her part seemed curiously drawn to the simple, downright, ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... be his province," and that that eager, subtle, and penetrative mind should range as freely as it did over subject after subject of human interest;—illuminating each of them in turn with those rays of true critical insight which, amid many bewildering cross-lights and some few downright ignes fatui, flash forth upon us ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... a kindly star was favoring her. Frances and Edith became friends on the spot; Nurse, who might have proved a problem, took an instant fancy to delicate Win and started on a course of coddling that luckily amused Win quite as much as it satisfied Nurse. Blunt, downright Roger appealed especially to Estelle, who also ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... "Look here-that's downright selfish," said his wife, "If we tried to keep you here Henry Brimstead would never forgive us. He talks about you morning, noon and night. Any one would think that you was the Samson ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... assumed towards me, and which it is difficult to describe by any other word than "heighty-teighty," and also by dark hints of changes which she hoped (but seemed far from believing) would be for my good, and finally, by downright lamentations and tragic inquiries as to what she had done to be parted from her boy, and "could her chickabiddy have the heart to drive away his loving and faithful nursey," that I learned that it was contemplated to supersede her by some one else, and that if she did not know that I was ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... living the life of a lying scoundrel, he was, he says (p. 192), 'happily restrained by Divine Grace,' so that 'all sense of remorse was not extinguished,' and there was no fall into 'downright infidelity.' At length he picked up Law's Serious Call, which moved him, as later on it moved better men (ante, i. 68). Step by step he got into a way of steady work, and lived henceforth a laborious ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... build a church. I'll go around with a subscription paper myself and raise the money. I feel lost without a church, I honestly do. It's downright heathenish." ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... soul I hate her. I do indeed. It isn't love for me now so much as downright malice against Palliser, because he baulked her project before. She is a wicked old woman. Some of us fellows are wicked ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... is rebellion!" exclaimed Schwarzenberg warmly; "that is putting himself in downright opposition to his ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... esteem no sacrifice too great, whether of time, or influence, or money, or talent, which could in any way promote a brother's spiritual welfare. But we are too apt to forget, if not to disbelieve, the solemn declarations of the bible; and forgetfulness to all practical results is as pernicious as downright infidelity. The man who forgets God is as little influenced by his law as the fool, who in his heart says there is no God at all. Now, this forgetfulness paralyzes our energies, damps our zeal, checks our benevolence. We do ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various
... what had happened this morning left an aftermath of bitterness in Mrs. Otway's kind heart. It was only too true that it would sometimes be awkward; in saying so downright Miss Forsyth had been right! She told herself, however, that after a few days they surely would all get accustomed to this strange, unpleasant, new state of things. Why, during the long Napoleonic wars ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... a bad egg like me does no end of a lot of good in the world, although downright criminals do more. If it weren't for people who interfered with others' belongings, the race would get slack and deteriorate. It's having to look after one's property which keeps people alert and up to the mark, and, therefore, those who're the cause of this fitness have their uses. No, my dear ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... too conscientious to tell a Downright lie, though sorely tempted so to do. "But a man may promise indirectly, as well as directly. When I have a thing much at heart, and converse often about it with a person who can grant all I wish, and that person, listens ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... help laughing as she answered, "Upon my word, I believe you know her quite as well as I do.—But, Mr. Knightley, are you perfectly sure that she has absolutely and downright accepted him. I could suppose she might in time—but can she already?—Did not you misunderstand him?—You were both talking of other things; of business, shows of cattle, or new drills—and might not you, in the confusion of so many subjects, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... lines. Again, time can only be measured by space, space by time; they are true universals and contraries; their synthesis is motion, a conception which requires them both and is completed by them. Or again, the philosophical extremes of downright materialism and idealism are each wholly true, yet but half the truth. The insoluble enigmas that either meets in standing alone are kindred to those which puzzled the old philosophers in the sophisms relating to motion, as, ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... moment, and appeared shocked at the idea, which, as he said truly enough, was now presented to him for the first time; but then Mrs Jamieson must remember that he had been living for a long time among savages—all of whom were heathens—some of them, he was afraid, were downright Dissenters. Then, seeing Miss Matty draw near, he hastily changed the conversation, and after a little while, turning to me, he said, "Don't be shocked, prim little Mary, at all my wonderful stories. I consider Mrs Jamieson fair game, and besides ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... objection some people have to strong measures! They see around them, amongst those under their influence, a great deal going on which is downright evil. You call upon them to put a stop to it, and to do all in their power to ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... good many of them, conceiving that it might be the civillest way of requiting her for her instructive conversation and the trouble she took in showing me the house. It cost me a pang (not a curmudgeonly, but a gentlemanly one) to offer a downright fee to the lady-like girl who had admitted me; but I swallowed my delicate scruples with some little difficulty, and she digested hers, so far as I could observe, with no difficulty at all. In fact, nobody need fear to hold out half a crown to any person ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... remained in that cold stiff degree of official communication, in which their intercourse was limited to as few expressions as the respective duties of their situation absolutely demanded. Such a state of misunderstanding is, in fact, worse than a downright quarrel;—the latter may be explained or apologized for, or become the subject of mediation; but in such a case as the former, an eclaircissement is as unlikely to take place as a general engagement between two armies which have taken ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... investigation. Well, on my soul and conscience, I do not find the fruit ripe enough, or to speak plainly, I do not consider that you have sufficient grounds to justify your petition for a judicial separation. Let us not forget that the French law is a very downright kind of thing, totally devoid of delicate feeling for nice distinctions. It recognizes only acts, serious, brutal acts, and unfortunately it is these acts we lack. Most assuredly I have been deeply touched while reading the account of the first year of your married life, so very ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... the foreigner. First, they cannot do without him if China is to come into line as a great nation among Eastern and Western powers. And then, again, could anyone doubt the sincerity of the desire on the part of the Celestial for closer and downright friendly intercourse if he has had nothing more than mere superficial dealings ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... Falstaff's ragged regiment. Little skill as we boasted in other points of husbandry, every mother's son of us would have served admirably to stick up for a scarecrow. And the worst of the matter was, that the first energetic movement essential to one downright stroke of real labor was sure to put a finish to these poor habiliments. So we gradually flung them all aside, and took to honest homespun and linsey-woolsey, as preferable, on the whole, to the plan recommended, I think, by Virgil,—"Ara nudus; sere nudus, "—which as Silas ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... presently was able to voice his appreciation of Althea's feat (as it was regarded) and to congratulate her upon it. Johnny McComas was not at all displeased. Albert had not been light-handed and graceful, but he developed (under this sudden stress) a sturdy, downright mode of speech which showed sincerity if not dexterity. The square-standing, straight-speaking farm-lad—straight-speaking, if none too ready—was sounding an atavistic note caught from his great-grandfather back in ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... promulgating public notices when they are posted on my front. To speak within bounds, I am the chief person of the municipality, and exhibit, moreover, an admirable pattern to my brother-officers by the cool, steady, upright, downright and impartial discharge of my business and the constancy with which I stand to my post. Summer or winter, nobody seeks me in vain, for all day long I am seen at the busiest corner, just above the market, stretching out my arms to rich and poor alike, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... rarely failed in being followed by a downright avowal of open love, which, somehow, what between the route coming, what with waiting for leave from home, etc., never got further than a most tender scene, and exchange of love tokens; and, in fact, such became so often the termination, that ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... while to trace, to earn a living by delighting a Southwark audience nightly with his fine baritone voice, good enough for a ballad in those latitudes, and good enough indeed for something much better if it had been properly exercised under a master. He was not downright dissolute, but his experience with his father, who was weak and silly, had given him a distaste for what he called religion; and he was loose, as might be expected. Still, he was not so loose as to have lost his finer instincts ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... the windows, on the footways, and in carriages, amused day after day for several hours in pelting and being pelted with handfuls of mock or real sugar-plums; and this no name or presence, but real downright showers of plaster comfits, from which people guard their eyes with meshes of wire. As sure as a carriage passes under a window or balcony where are acquaintances of theirs, down comes a shower of hail, ineffectually returned ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... laughing all the time—a fact that was afterward recalled with some surprise and no little horror. At the time, the loungers thought his smile was a merry one, but afterward they stoutly maintained there was downright villainy in the leer. His coat was very dusty, proving that he had driven far and swiftly. Three or four of the loungers followed him into the store. He was standing before the counter over which Mr. Lamson ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... given her. It contained, she knew, the money to pay for her board and lessons during the next six months,—for the elder Miss Desmond was off to India, Japan and Thibet, and her horror of banks and cheques made her very downright in the matter of money. That in the envelope was all Betty had, and that was Madame Gautier's. But the other part of the advice—to go to Madame Gautier's in the morning? If in the morning, ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... Rutherford know them well. They were both of them really excellent people; a minister and his wife; deeply attached to one another; and yet as wretched as wretched could be. How are you going to account for it? It is vastly important just because it is so common. Domestic difficulties rarely arise out of downright wickedness. Husband and wife may be as free from all outward fault as poor Mr. and Mrs. Cardew. Mark Rutherford thinks that Mr. Cardew was chiefly to blame, and his verdict is probably just. A man takes ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... a very clever woman, and gives a capital account of the battle between OUR and YOUR weeds. Does it not hurt your Yankee pride that we thrash you so confoundedly? I am sure Mrs. Gray will stick up for your own weeds. Ask her whether they are not more honest, downright good sort of weeds. The book gives an extremely pretty picture of one of your villages; but I see your autumn, though so much more gorgeous than ours, comes on sooner, and that is ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... than a downright unmistakable triumph would convince them. She was a professional in the grain and yet in this adventure she would be under the curse of an amateur's status, a thing she hated as all ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... by its costliness and magnificence. Of course the milliner assured her that every thing she took a fancy to from its rarity, was becoming; and then, oh dear! how the Fairies were amused! for poor Julia looked downright ugly in some of the things she selected, and still went away as self satisfied as ever, on the old grounds that the costume was so expensive that none of her acquaintance could get one like it. This was still her chief comfort! Euphrosyne actually shook her fist at her as she was ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... exclaimed to himself, giving way to downright anger. "What do they want with me here? What is all this traffic they are carrying on? Pooh! all women, even pious ones, are up to the same tricks. If Madame" (giving her the name by which her lodgers spoke of her) "wants me out of ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... was our friend. Formed on the good old plan, A true and brave and downright honest man He blew no trumpet in the market-place, Nor in the church with hypocritic face Supplied with cant the lack of Christian grace; Loathing pretence, he did with cheerful will What others talked of while their hands were still; And, while "Lord, Lord!" the pious tyrants ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... facts about April are alternate sunshine and showers; but the subtle blending of shadows and lights, of murmurs and movements, in April, gives us not mere shocks of sensation, but unity of joy as does music. Therefore when a poet sees the vision of a girl in April, even a downright materialist is in sympathy with him. But we know that the same individual would be menacingly angry if the law of heredity or a geometrical problem were described as a girl or a rose—or even as a cat or a camel. For these intellectual abstractions have no magical touch for our lute-strings ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... spots—imitating. But I thought he was rather a cabbage. A cabbage is a strong, healthy vegetable, honest and vigorous. It's closely in touch with nature, and it doesn't pretend to be what it isn't. You might do well to study a cabbage: but not follow its program. A cabbage has too much to learn. How our downright young moderns will learn things, I'm sure I don't know. Sanine scornfully says "not by repression." Well, I don't think highly of repressions; they're not the best method. Yet it's possible that they might be ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... their existence was unknown to the learned men of Europe till within the last sixty years. The most extraordinary of the two is the Ornithorhynchus, or, to translate the hard Greek word into English, the Duck-bill. Its mouth is a true duck's bill, a downright horny beak, and its short paws sprawling sideways with a membrane joining the toes together below, and coming a good deal beyond them in front, seem intermediate between the flippers of the seal and the webbed feet of a water-bird. ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... taxation, that it will induce greater care in the expenditure of the public money. Fraudulent contracts are not the only, nor even the chief cause of our financial embarrassments. It may be hoped that what is extracted from it by downright swindling, however considerable in amount, does not cause the great drain upon the Treasury. But if money can be obtained by the simple issue of evidences of debt, and without any provision to sustain the credit of the Government by taxation, the process of supply is too facile. The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... Little Peachey!" he called. "Thar ain't no more to be said than that—just you an' me in the Ragged Woods at sundown. An' now—Blessed if we ain't downright stampeded! It's a reg'lar round-up, Peachey!" And he laughed ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... not for the best, nor as I think they ought to be; but still they are better than that which is downright bad. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... lucky fellow to have been away from us, Terence, for it is downright starving we have been. The soldiers have only had a mouthful of meat served out to them as rations, most days; and they have got so thin that their clothes are hanging loose about them. If it hadn't been ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... when we could not keep our handkerchiefs wet. McAllister, like a brave fellow as he was, aroused himself, and endeavoured to encourage us to persevere. He especially warned the men against drinking salt water, telling them that it would be downright suicide, and that they might as well jump overboard and be drowned at once. We were certainly making way, and every hour lessening our distance to Jamaica. Again our hopes were raised. We had a few scraps of food to support ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... blood! Fortunately for the present race, there is not so much of that folly practised, but still there is room for improvement. To dose a healthy child with physic is the grossest absurdity. No, the less physic a delicate child has the better it will be for him, but physic to a healthy child is downright poison! And brimstone of all medicines! It is both weakening and depressing to the system, and by opening the pores of the skin and by relaxing the bowels, is likely to give cold, and thus to make a healthy, a sickly child. Sweeten his blood! It is more likely to weaken ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... It don't require any thinking to be aware of that. It's downright stupid;—two cousins with nothing a year between them, when no doubt each of them might do very well. They're well-born, and well-looking, and clever, and all that. It's absurd, and I don't suppose it will ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... of any tramps over my way," he said, frowning. "These old lunatics your uncle left here are simply hipped; that's all. Mr. Bashford made a mistake in turning the place over to them; it was silly, downright silly. It's a wonder you didn't think of upsetting his will on the ground of mental unsoundness. It's not up to me to suggest such a thing, but I believe you could knock ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... feelings were no study to himself; he knew nothing but the pleasure and the pain of them; but, I believe it was not mainly for himself that he was sorry. Like Othello, "the pity of it" haunted him: he had taken Alice for a downright girl, about whom there was and could be no mistake; and the first hot blast of prosperity had swept her away like a hectic leaf. What were all the shops dressed out in holly and mistletoe, what were all the ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... Pershore, about eight miles from Worcester, and, as I believe, had no notice of our march, came on very confidently in the morning, and found us fairly drawn up to receive them. I must confess this was the bluntest, downright way of making war that ever was seen. The enemy, who, in all the little knowledge I had of war, ought to have discovered our numbers, and guessed by our posture what our design was, might easily have informed themselves that we intended to attack them, and so might ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... the Ocean have such an honest and amusing frankness about you," he said, "that I vow to God you are overwhelming. I am a downright admirer of your noble calling, and something skilled in its terms. What spectacle, for instance, can be finer than a noble ship 'stemming the waves with her taffrail,' and chasing her wake, like a racer ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... to me a downright shame," Ronald said indignantly; "and though I have no great love for the English, and hate their Hanoverian George and his people, I shouldn't like to fight with one of the Scotch regiments in the French service in ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... differed, he fancied, not by more and less religion, but by more and less dissimulations. And, therefore, it seemed to him scandalous that a princess, who must, of course, in her heart regard (in common with himself) all mysteries as solemn masques and mummeries, should pretend in a case of downright serious business, to pump up, out of dry conventional hoaxes, any solid objection to a man of his shining merit. 'The Trinity,' for instance, that he viewed as the password, which the knowing ones gave in answer to the challenge of the sentinel; but, as soon ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... remarked Tom, as he was stowing away his second generous piece of pie, "the feed at the Hall is all right, but when it comes to a real, downright spread, like this, the palm goes to Aunt Martha." And Dick and Sam agreed ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... a high premium on individual courage in combat, and the weakling or coward was crushed contemptuously. I don't even attempt to justify the Indian treatment of captured civilians and noncombatants, but nevertheless, I absorbed quite a few of my grandfather's ideals and views about war, and it's downright disgusting to see him so falsely represented by the authors of the run-of-the-mill Western story ...
— Pushbutton War • Joseph P. Martino
... shrewd Horace, with disportive wit, Rally his friend, and tickle while he bit; Winning access, he play'd around the heart, And, gently touching, prick'd the tainted part. The crowd he sneer'd; but sneer'd with such a grace, It pass'd for downright ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... rich young voice of the mistress of the house, "I'm so glad. Roger Barnes, this is just downright good of you; it's so long ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... Poor dear hat! how its vanity (if hats have vanity) must have suffered! For certain its owner had none, unless a lurking pride in his own bluffness and bluntness may be termed such. He piqued himself on being a plain downright Englishman, and on a voice and address pretty much like his apparel, rough, strong, and warm, fit for all weathers. A ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... Apollo! And immediately the little broth plays the mischief with me, and is disturbed and rumbles like thunder, and grumbles dreadfully: at first gently pappax, pappax; and then it adds papa-pappax; and finally, it thunders downright ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes
... is little doubt that he felt the former attacks the more bitterly of the two. Dennis, his first critic, called him "a short squab gentleman, the very bow of the God of love; his outward form is downright monkey." A rival poet whom he had offended hung up a rod in a coffee house where men of letters resorted, and threatened to whip Pope like a naughty child if he showed his face there. It is said, though perhaps not on the best authority, that when ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... notes with Moore, I was confirmed in one or two points which I had always laid down in considering poor Byron. One was, that like Rousseau he was apt to be very suspicious, and a plain downright steadiness of manner was the true mode to maintain his good opinion. Will Rose told me that once, while sitting with Byron, he fixed insensibly his eyes on his feet, one of which, it must be remembered, was deformed. Looking up suddenly, he saw Byron regarding him with a look of concentrated ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... when I was twelve years old I was adopted by a gentleman in Papeite, and he sent me to Sydney to school. Do you know Sydney? Well, I was three years with the Misses F——, in —— Street. My goodness! I WAS glad to leave—and so were the Misses F—— to see me go. They said I was downright wicked, because one day I tore the dress off a girl who said my skin was tallowy, like my name. When I came back to Tahiti my guardian took me to Raiatea, where he had a business, and said I must marry ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... Laurie passes so quickly from hyper-loyalty to downright treason, that he is an insolvable problem. As wigs were once worn out of compliment to a monarch, so when the Queen expects a little heir, Sir Peter causes a gentleman, over whom he has an accidental influence, to have a little hair too. But oh the hypocrite! the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various
... "I've made it downright good and dainty, and he never found it out. I bought the lard and the spices out of my six francs: I'm the mistress of my own money"; and she disappeared rapidly, fancying she ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... to the front of the table): Look here, Olivia, you're downright rude to that boy, and if there's one thing that never gets a woman anywhere, it's rudeness. What have ...
— Night Must Fall • Williams, Emlyn
... obey. One hears so much nowadays of the black population having equal rights with the white inhabitants, that it is well to remember how ferociously their lack of civilization occasionally comes out. Doubtless there are cruel men both white and black, but for downright brutality the nigger is hard to beat, and it is also quite certain that whom the latter does not fear he will not love. I have personally experienced great devotion and most attentive service on the part of natives, and they are deserving ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... his father agreed, "a long fourteen. And my horse was pumped, regularly pumped. I can't bear to see a horse as done as that. It distresses me, downright distresses me. Hate to over-press a horse. Hate to over-press anything that can't stand up to you and take its revenge on you. Always feel ashamed of myself if I've over-pressed a horse. But I hadn't ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... should be the marble image of death or weariness. So the concomitants should be distinctly marble, severe and monumental in their lines, not shroud, not bedclothes, not actual armor nor brocade, not a real soft pillow, not a downright hard stuffed mattress, but the mere type and suggestion of these: a certain rudeness and incompletion of finish is very noble in all. Not that they are to be unnatural, such lines as are given should be pure and true, ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... he shook the bridle. Dashing aslantwise, as before, the winged horse made another arrow-flight toward the Chimaera, and Bellerophon aimed another downright stroke at one of the two remaining heads, as he shot by. But this time, neither he nor Pegasus escaped so well as at first. With one of its claws, the Chimaera had given the young man a deep scratch in his shoulder, and had slightly damaged the left wing of the flying steed with the other. On his ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... what truth is, so well as wise people like you and your professor; but one thing I do know about it, and that is that it is not pleasant to the ear; falsehood is far more esteemed; it is prettier, and therefore pleasanter; while Truth, conscious of its purity, blurts out downright remarks, and offends people. Here is a case of it: even you are offended with me for having discovered (with your assistance) how this matter really stands, and shown that our common object is hard of attainment. Suppose you had been in love with a statue and hoped to win ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... picnicking," she said. "A whole lot of us. Somehow, I wandered away from the others...." One minute the hill was bright with sun, and the next it was deep in shadows and the wind that had been merely cool was downright cold. She shivered and glanced around expecting her mother to be somewhere near, holding out a sweater or jacket. There was no one at all in sight. Even then, she never thought of being frightened. She turned to retrace her steps. There was a big tree that looked familiar, ...
— The Sound of Silence • Barbara Constant
... sentence for the purpose of emphasizing some idea, a writer has not entire freedom. Good use, which is the use of acknowledged masters, decides what may be done. There are certain arrangements of words to which we are accustomed; and the disregard of them leads to obscurity or downright contrariety in the thought. "Brutus stabbed Caesar" is the common order; "Brutus Caesar stabbed," or "Stabbed Brutus Caesar," is obscure; while "Caesar stabbed Brutus" is the very opposite of the truth. Those who have studied Latin know that as far as ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... something about you Britishers I can't help admiring!" he declared. "You are downright, ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... you before now but for constant and arduous occupation. . . . I am very glad to hear of the success of your reading, and still more glad that you went at it in downright earnest. I should never have made my success in life if I had been shy of taking pains, or if I had not bestowed upon the least thing I have ever undertaken exactly the same attention and care that I have bestowed ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... won't discuss it," she said, with resignation. "I knew you would refuse me." She approached the door. Her mother got up and resolutely stood in the way. "Before you commit an act of downright madness," Mrs. Presty said, "I mean to try if I can stop you. Go back ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... daughter, sister, friend, without impeachment of one's sagacity or integrity; but it is such a dreadful indorsement of a man to marry him! Her own consciousness must be sufficiently grievous; pray do not irritate it into downright madness. Nay, what, after all, are the so heinous faults upon which you animadvert? She cannot earn a cent: that may be her misfortune, it need not be her fault. Perhaps Clement, like Albano, and all good husbands, "never loved to see the sweet form anywhere else ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... created. The less we know about the personalities of very distinguished geniuses, the better it is for their fame. Shakspeare might not seem so great to us if we knew his peculiarities and infirmities as we know those of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Carlyle; only such a downright honest and good man as Dr. Johnson can stand the severe scrutiny of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... Mrs. Gray, wiping her eyes, and settling her hair, "it was downright careless of me not to tell you right away, but I was so excited over Austin that I forgot all about it for a minute; of course, it's a dreadful disappointment to you, but it just couldn't seem to ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... beginning of many tunes very well, but there leaves them, and goes no further. So up and to my office, where we sat, and among other things I had a fray with Sir J. Minnes in defence of my Will in a business where the old coxcomb would have put a foot upon him, which was only in Jack Davis and in him a downright piece of knavery in procuring a double ticket and getting the wrong one paid as well as the second was to the true party. But it appeared clear enough to the board that Will was true in it. Home to dinner, and after dinner by water to the Temple, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... that rang out this downright exposition of the facts. Sir John shook his head; he ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... evidently been coming more and more urgently into the workday deliberations of the American administration. Of course, it is not spoken of in set terms to this effect in official utterances, perhaps not even within doors; that sort of thing is not done. But it can do no harm to use downright expressions in a scientific discussion of these phenomena, with a view to understanding the current drift ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... long out of all reasonable proportion. She was so hollow in the back that she seemed to have been bent in a machine. She had neither tail nor mane, and her neck, as long as a man, stuck straight up into the air, supporting a head without ears. Her eyes had an expression in them of downright insanity, and the muscles of her face were afflicted with periodical convulsions that drew back the corners of the mouth and wrinkled the upper lip so as to produce a ghastly grin every two or three seconds. In color she was "claybank," ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... would be no match for a few regular men-of-war. New England had no navy, though the New Englanders had enjoyed a good deal of experience in minor privateering against the Spaniards during the last few years, as well as a certain amount of downright piracy in time of peace, whenever a Frenchman or a Spaniard could be safely taken at a disadvantage. So Shirley asked Commodore Warren, commanding the North American station, to lend his aid. Warren had married an American and was very well disposed towards the colonists. But, having no orders ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... to get rid of the downright vulgarity of phrase in the last stanza, Wordsworth invents an impossible tortoise-shell, and thus robs his story of the reality which alone gave it a living interest. Any extemporized raft would have floated the boy down to immortality. But Wordsworth never quite learned the distinction ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... The first translation into English was published in 1905 in Tokyo by Capt. E. F. Calthrop, R.F.A. However, this translation is, in the words of Dr. Giles, "excessively bad." He goes further in this criticism: "It is not merely a question of downright blunders, from which none can hope to be wholly exempt. Omissions were frequent; hard passages were willfully distorted or slurred over. Such offenses are less pardonable. They would not be tolerated ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... ——Stark, errant, downright beggars. Ay, Without equivocation, statute beggars, Couchant and passant, guardant, rampant beggars; Current ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... way, but it wasn't much of a way. She liked the fine clothes and the trinkets he gave her, but, after he went blind, she could hardly tolerate him. Lots of times, she would have been downright cruel to him if I hadn't ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... Matt. vii. 14. But forasmuch as the passage was wonderful narrow, even so narrow that I could not, but with great difficulty, enter in thereat, it showed me, that none could enter into life, but those that were in downright earnest, and unless also they left that wicked world behind them; for here was only room for body and soul, but not for body ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... should have seen less of him, and it would have dawned on him gradually; but here he would discover it at once. And I dreaded his doing so. Yes, I was a downright coward, ashamed of the One who had died for me. This was not a comfortable reflection, but I was convinced ...
— Christie, the King's Servant • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... to you, of course, and it can't make any difference—really—to him; but it's a downright dishonourable thing to do, and that makes a jolly lot of difference to me. You see, I haven't any business to go and feel ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... live at Florence among vulgar vices and tame slavery, will stare at these accounts. Pray be acquainted with your own country, while it is in its lustre. In a regular monarchy the folly of the Prince gives the tone; in a downright tyranny, folly dares give itself no airs; it is in a wanton overgrown commonwealth that whim and debauchery intrigue best together. Ask me which of these governments I prefer—oh! the last—only I fear it is the ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... plates, and glasses distributed. But for the feast. Mr. Snodgrass's basket was opened, and out of it were taken four remarkably fine chickens, and a tongue—uncooked! There was but one mode of accounting for this trifling omission. Mr. Snodgrass's Betty was a downright matter-of-fact person, who obeyed orders to the very letter. Having been told, the evening before, to get four fine chickens for roasting, together with a tongue, and to pack them, next morning, in a basket, she did so literally and strictly; but, as she had received ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... externally agreeable, of bending in all indifferent matters to the whims and wishes of superiors, and of saying what they think Signori like. This habit, while it smoothes the surface of existence, raises up a barrier of compliment and partial insincerity, against which the more downright natures of us Northern folk break in vain efforts. Our advances are met with an imperceptible but impermeable resistance by the very people who are bent on making the world pleasant to us. It is the ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... positive evidence of downright frauds and vicious food adulteration in the times of Apicius. The old rascal himself is not above giving directions for rose wine without roses, or how to make a spoiled honey marketable, and other similar adulterations. Those of our readers with sensitive gastronomic instinct had better skip the ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind. For God's sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself! As for the others, the irony of facts shall take it out of their hands, and make fools of them in downright earnest, ere the farce be over. There shall be such a mopping and a mowing at the last day, and such blushing and confusion of countenance for all those who have been wise in their own esteem, and have not learnt the rough lessons that youth hands on to age. If we are ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "If you show off with your tempers, that will give a color to their notion that you have been badly brought up. You must do us and yourself what credit you can, going amongst strangers. I am not afraid for you, unless you set up your little back, and determine to be downright naughty and perverse." ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... were to be wished) I would rather have a plain downright wisdom, than a foolish and affected eloquence. For what is so furious and Bedlam like as a vain sound of chosen and excellent words, without any subject of sentence or ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... as Dulcie expressed it, "rather a dear, quaint thing." But she was more than that, I thought. She had such a pungent wit, her sayings were at times so downright—not to say acrid—that many stood in terror of her and positively dreaded her quick tongue. I rather liked Aunt Hannah myself, perhaps because, by the greatest of good luck, I happened not to have done anything so far to incur her displeasure, ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... parable we may detect a feeling of surprise creeping over our minds, that the Lord, who had the whole world and its history before him whence to select his examples, should have chosen a specimen of worldly wisdom, damaged by an admixture of downright falsehood, in order to stimulate thereby the spiritual zeal of his own disciples. The three following observations will, in my judgment, explain and completely remove the difficulty:—(1.) The Holy One, precisely because he is perfectly holy, can ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... comprehended and admired. His authority was sufficient to override all scruples that might have stood in the way of this downright description of Mary's charms. He became the model for all her later worshippers; Suso, for instance, often quotes him, and Brother Hans called him the harpist and fiddler ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... guess the feminine mind is too innocent to understand all these immoral writers. I'm sure I don't want to criticize Bernard Shaw; I understand he is very popular with the highbrows in Minneapolis; but just the same——As far as I can make out, he's downright improper! The things he SAYS——Well, it would be a very risky thing for our young folks to see. It seems to me that a play that doesn't leave a nice taste in the mouth and that hasn't any message is nothing but—nothing but——Well, whatever it may be, it ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... clearness of expression in this, and a downright surrender of himself, which so flattered her and so fluttered her that she was almost reduced to the giving of herself up because she could not reply to such an appeal in language less courteous than that of agreement. After a moment or two she found herself remaining silent, with a ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... gay laugh and the strained look passed in a moment from her eyes. "I was all that was beautiful a little while ago. You're quite right though. It is a foul book, and the man who wrote it is a downright beast. Take it away, and never ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... for the reasons known to women. Her intimate friendships were with women as with men. The closest friend of this most manfully-minded of women was one of her sex, little resembling her, except in downright truthfulness, lovingness, and ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... little bigot, you at a ball! Do you know, my girl, this seems to me downright nonsense! You and the hornpipe! Faith, all you need now is to want to get married! A deuce of a want, that! But if you marry, I warn you that I won't keep you—mind that! I've no desire to wait on your brats! Come a little nearer——Oho! why——bless my soul! Mademoiselle ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... are you doing?" ejaculated Bonaparte, angrily. "Will not the princess tell the Count de Provence that the Tuileries are now inhabited by a downright bourgeois and hen-pecked husband, who treats his wife sentimentally even in the presence of other persons, and in return for her caresses has always to comply with her wishes? And shall we not be laughed ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... idealizes a scene. How much less romantic the town looked now than when I saw it floating, as it seemed, upon the sky-blue water in a haze of gold-dust fired by the slanting rays! It was then like the Castillon of some troubadour's song; now it was a mean-looking little sun-baked town modernized to downright plainness, with no remnant of its ramparts remaining save a sombre old Gothic gateway near the river, and no ecclesiastical architecture deserving notice. Its site, however, is the same as that which it occupied in the Middle Ages, namely, close to ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... the king, at last, to grant it to all Scottish officers, pointing out that they were able to do much better service with their own claymores, than with weapons to which they were altogether unaccustomed; and that Scottish men were accustomed to fight with the edge, and to strike downright sweeping blows, whereas the swords here are fitted only for the point, which, although doubtless superior in a duel, is far less effective in ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... see that we have got to bolt, but the question is, how? If we were to ride they would ride us down, that is certain. Jerry and Tom might possibly get away, though that ain't likely. Their critters are good, but nothing downright extraordinary, and the chances are that some of the Utes have got faster horses than theirs. As for the rest of us, they would have us before ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... I tell you it will! I like the boy; plenty of downright British courage in him. Isn't afraid of either of us. Egad, I like him, Harry; and he'll ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... town and neigbourhood of Mannhamilton, has, to the palpable evidence of the whole and next baronies, been making up, as the phrase goes, to Letty Murphy, for the last six months. This has been no case of Bardell v. Pickwick, but a real downright matter of love-making on the one side, and love made on the other. Letters, too have been written, and are now to be read in court, to the great edification of the unmarried jury, and amusement of the whole assemblage; and the deceitful culprit has gone ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... look at," said Ransom. "He was about the middle height, and strongly built. He had a firm look about the face, and you might have been sure of his doing what he said he would do, just from hearing him talk. Blunt and downright, he was—and didn't stop to pick words. He had seen a tougher life than any of his neighbours—fighting as a ranger and regular soldier—and you might suppose there was no nice affectation in his dress and manners like you find ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... hostility of the eastern volunteers, the downright enmity of Fremont's company and the alien habits of the Mexican population, the sober-minded members of the Battalion must have been compelled to keep their own society very largely while in the pueblo of Los Angeles, or, to give it its Spanish appellation, "El Pueblo de ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... you he's the hope of Gruenewald," cried Fritz. "He doesn't suit some of your high-and-dry, old, ancient ideas; but he's a downright modern man—a man of the new lights and the progress of the age. He does some things wrong; so they all do; but he has the people's interests next his heart; and you mark me—you, sir, who are a Liberal, and the enemy of all ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... weakness; and it is the unhappy lot of thoroughly weak men, that their very sympathies, affections, confidences—all the qualities which in better constituted minds are virtues—dwindle into foibles, or turn into downright vices. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... has been prolific in fabulous writings upon these times, which have been devoured with avidity. I hope John Bull is not so devoted to gilded foreign fictions as to spurn the unadorned truth from one of his downright countrywomen: and let me advise him en passant, not to treat us beauties of native growth with indifference at home; for we readily find compensation in the regard, patronage, and admiration of every nation in Europe. I am old now, and ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... of immediate and complete land purchase but left ourselves subjected to the entire burden of war taxation. Other speakers pointed out that we ought not to let ourselves be lured into driving the Southern Unionists and the Ulstermen together against us. Mr. Clancy said in his downright manner that he would not as yet express his view publicly: but that he was not going to reject this offer for the sake of fixing taxes on tea and tobacco, and that when the right time came, he would say so. The strongest arguments used against this view were that in surrendering control ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... him pause, and he almost wished he had not taken so much trouble to meet Miss Van Tuyn and her companion. For he could say nothing he wanted to say while Garstin was there. And the man was so damnably unconventional, in fact, so downright rude, and so totally devoid of all delicacy, all insight in social matters, that even if he saw that Braybrooke wanted a quiet word with Miss Van Tuyn he would probably not let him have it. However, it was too late now to avoid the steadily advancing couple. Miss Van Tuyn ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... makes perfect and Kedzie was learning to be downright bad, though yet awhile she gave but stingy reward to her assiduous cavaliers. She was what Pet called a demi-veuve and unprofitable to the men she used as weapons of her revenge against her innocent ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... imprudent, Sarah. It don't require any thinking to be aware of that. It's downright stupid;—two cousins with nothing a year between them, when no doubt each of them might do very well. They're well-born, and well-looking, and clever, and all that. It's absurd, and I don't suppose it ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... feel he is badly used because he is so honest. I sometimes wish that I could afford to be honest too and to tell somebody the downright truth. I should like to tell him the truth and I almost think I will. 'My dear fellow, I did for a time think I couldn't do better, and I'm not at all sure now that I can. But then you are so very dull, ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... simple-minded Welsh parson, from making him a laughing-stock. We too, whose moral judgment may have been seduced from the right by the fascinations of his intellectual playing, are brought to estimate more justly the natural honours and safeguards of downright integrity and innocence; and to see that the deepest shrewdness stands in not thinking to be shrewd at all. Thus our judgment of the man is set right in the very point where it was most liable to be drawn astray. Gervinus regards this idea as being the soul of the piece. He ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... door, and the horse was stolen. In seeking to recover the stolen horse, he unintentionally stole another. In trying to restore the wrong horse to his rightful owner, he was himself arrested. After no end of comic and dolorous adventures, he surmounted all his misfortunes by downright pluck and genuine good feeling. It is a noble contribution ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... you are so dull, You have not learnt it half: You will grow up a downright fool, And ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... are downright turn-coats," I said, coming down from the stile. "Their red mantles are nothing but pearl-colored now, and presently they'll be russet-gray. That whippoorwill always brings the dew with him, too; so I must go home. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... pupils, who accompanied the Chinese troops to Kashgar in 1758-1759. The paper in the Geographical Society's Journal, which has been referred to, demonstrates how these erroneous data must have originated. It shows that the Jesuit geography was founded on downright accidental error, and, as a consequence, that the narratives which profess de visu to corroborate that geography must be downright forgeries. When the first edition was printed, I retained the belief in a Bolor where the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... fencing-master could have parried a blow more neatly. Then the one-eyed hostler began to thrust and strike with the bar as if in downright earnest. ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... would be downright impudence on our part to get too inquisitive about the affairs of the man who employs us. We looked Mr. Seaton up, and found he had the reputation of being an honest man. That's as much of his business as we have any right ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... moral rectitude:—in a word, if the features of my religion corresponded with the pictures drawn of it in flying pamphlets and anniversary declamations, I would consider myself and the rest of my fraternity as downright idiots, wickedly stupid, to remain one hour in a state which deprives us of our rights as citizens, whereas such an accommodating scheme would make them not ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... from purely empirical, evolutionist, or transformist doctrines, such as those set forth in the works of Lamarck and Darwin which came to his notice. Judging Darwin's theory solely by an extensive extract in The Times, he described it, in a letter to Adam Louis von Doss (March 1, 1860), as "downright empiricism" (platter Empirismus). In fact, for a voluntarist like Schopenhauer, a theory so sanely and cautiously empirical and rational as that of Darwin left out of account the inward force, the essential motive, of evolution. For what is, in effect, the hidden force, the ultimate ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... miserable as is possible who come nearest to beasts and never attempt anything beyond man. Go to then, let's try how demonstrable this is; not by enthymemes or the imperfect syllogisms of the Stoics, but by plain, downright, and ordinary examples. ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... brother," said Richard, "thou art even matchless at the trick of the sword, and right perilous were it to meet thee. Still, however, I put some faith in a downright English blow, and what we cannot do by sleight we eke out by strength. Nevertheless, in truth thou art as expert in inflicting wounds as my sage Hakim in curing them. I trust I shall see the learned leech; I have much to thank him for, and had ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... Francis Burdett his spokesman in the House and to the country, often venting his chagrin or singularity of sentiment at the expense of his friend; but what in the first was trick or reckless vanity, was in the last plain downright English honesty and singleness of heart. In the case of the State Trials, in 1794, Mr. Tooke rather compromised his friends to screen himself. He kept repeating that "others might have gone on to Windsor, but he had stopped at Hounslow," as if to go farther might have been dangerous and ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... he thought, had made me faint. He kissed me and called me his bride; he thought not for a moment that I could refuse him. And I—despise me, Jane—I was such a dastard, that I could not summon up courage for a downright refusal. Yes, I was so craven also, as to be unwilling to die. Ah, my God, it appeared to me that life at that moment beckoned to me with thousands of joys, thousands of charms, which I had never known, and for which my soul ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... and their huge remains lie embedded in the deep morasses of Chambers and Anderson. We wonder at the length of face and general atrabilious look that mark the portraits of the men of that generation, but it is no marvel when even their relaxations were such downright hard work. Fathers when their day on earth was up must have folded down the leaf and left the task to be finished by their sons,—a dreary inheritance. Yet both Drayton and Daniel are fine poets, though both of them in their most elaborate works made shipwreck of their genius on the ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... of theirs, do their best to make up the difference to him in contempt and abuse. Schoolboys are not distinguished for a fastidious reticence. If they dislike, they never hesitate to say so, and they have a painfully downright way of giving reasons for their behaviour, which is apt to jar on a temperament so sensitive that its owner always and only treads the path of high principle when self-interest points ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 25, 1891 • Various
... "Yes, scared—downright scared," he answered. "I reckon I'm like an Indian. An Indian doesn't believe it's good medicine to let the gods know he's big happy. For there's the ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... description could paint up to the life, the mixture of pique, confusion and disappointment, that appeared in his countenance, joined to the mournful exclamation: "By heavens, a woman!" This at once opened her eyes, which had been shut in downright stupidity. However, as if he had meant to retrieve that escape, he still continued to toy with and fondle her, but with so staring an alteration from extreme warmth into a chill and forced civility, that even Emily herself could not but take notice of it, and now began to wish she had ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... myself, and calculating wrong; always disappointed where I placed most reliance; the dupe of friendship, and the fool of love; have I not reason to hate and to despise myself? Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough."[31]—This is not exactly downright cynicism; it is more like disappointment, beating its head frantically against the wall of circumstance. Yet through his bitterest utterances there is felt the warm sentiment that, "let people rail at virtue, at genius ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... I don't think I am," replied Elisabeth, with engaging frankness; "conceit is my besetting sin and I know it. Not stately, scornful, dignified pride, but downright, inflated, perky, puffed-up conceit. I have often remarked upon it to Christopher, and he has ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... eagerness of his glance—the profound, all-forgetting adoration which marked his whole air, gaze, and manner. Nor should I have been so wretchedly blind to what was the obvious feeling of discontent and disquiet in her bosom. Never did evenings seem to pass with more downright dullness to any one party in the world. If Edgerton spoke to her, which he did not frequently, his address was marked by a trepidation and hesitancy akin to fear—a manner which certainly indicated anything but a foregone conclusion between them; ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... she do," she had just been saying to Sarah, "before I befriended her? It is a downright imposition upon my good-nature, and I have no ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... constantly onward, over hill and dale, and through the solitary woods. Sometimes he swung his club aloft, and splintered a mighty oak with a downright blow. His mind was so full of the giants and monsters with whom it was the business of his life to fight, that perhaps he mistook the great tree for a giant or a monster. And so eager was Hercules to achieve what he had ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... Such was our friend. Formed on the good old plan, A true and brave and downright honest man He blew no trumpet in the market-place, Nor in the church with hypocritic face Supplied with cant the lack of Christian grace; Loathing pretence, he did with cheerful will What others talked of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... fashionable audience by a very delicate piece of flattery. "All the world here," writes the indignant Lord Chancellor, "is running on Sundays to the Caledonian Chapel in Hatton Garden, where they bear a Presbyterian orator from Scotland preaching, as some ladies term it, charming matter, though downright nonsense. To the shame of the King's Ministers be it said, that many of them have gone to this schism-shop with itching ears. Lauderdale told me that when Lady —— is there, the preacher never speaks of an heavenly mansion, but an ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... conceived of stage personages on the basis of a ruling trait or passion (a notable simplification of actual life be it observed in passing); and, placing these typified traits in juxtaposition in their conflict and contrast, struck the spark of comedy. Downright, as his name indicates, is "a plain squire"; Bobadill's humour is that of the braggart who is incidentally, and with delightfully comic effect, a coward; Brainworm's humour is the finding out of things to the end of fooling ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... answered Thomas, "consider what you ask. You are in perfect health and so is our child. Would it not, then, be a downright scandal that you should stop here in luxury while your husband went out to confront grave difficulties among the Sisas—not the Sneezers—for I may tell you at once that the difficulties are very grave? There is a noted witch-doctor amongst this people named Menzi, who, I understand, ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... I leave this subject I must say a word or two about the curious invention of our own days called Restoration, a method of dealing with works of bygone days which, though not so degrading in its spirit as downright destruction, is nevertheless little better in its results on the condition of those works of art; it is obvious that I have no time to argue the question out to-night, so I will only make ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... She is liable to be beaten upon by all the winds that blow, to be drenched with rain, to be buried in cold sea fogs out of the east, and powdered with the snow as it comes flying southward from the Highland hills. The weather is raw and boisterous in winter, shifty and ungenial in summer, and a downright meteorological purgatory in the spring. The delicate die early, and I, as a survivor, among bleak winds and plumping rain, have been sometimes tempted to envy them their fate. For all who love shelter and the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I suppose, hard by; for you looked round you, as if not willing to be overheard. So I resolved to write: that my writing may stand as upon record for my upright meaning; being none of your Lovelaces; you will mark that, Madam; but a downright, true, honest, faithful Englishman. So hope you will not disdain to write a line or two to this my proposal: and I shall look upon it as a great honour, I will assure you, and be proud thereof. What can I say more?—for you are ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... that the little man could be so vehement. His mother, with her usual solicitousness, inquired into the condition of his mind, asking if he was only cracked, or downright crazy. ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... and made of it in many ways a new thing. Palma, with all his love of beauty in colour and form, in nature as in man, had a less finely attuned artistic temperament than Giorgione, Titian, or Lotto. Morelli has called attention to that element of downright energy in his mountain nature which in a way counteracts the marked sensuousness of his art, save when he interprets the charms of the full-blown Venetian woman. The great Milanese critic attributes this to the Bergamasque origin of the artist, showing itself beneath ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... a nose undeniably pug, a full, wide mouth, and strong, white teeth,—fortunately, since every one showed when she laughed, and she laughed a great deal. Then she had a dumpy figure, and good large hands and feet, a look of downright honesty and good-temper, and a nice, clear voice in speech or singing, though she only sang hymns. But for all this, every-body in Deerfield liked 'Tenty Scran'; old and young, men and maidens, all had a kindly welcome for ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... the disciples and followers of Buchanan, Hobbs and Milton, who have exceeded their masters in downright impudence, scurrility, and lying, and the new modellers of commonwealths, who, under a zealous pretence of securing the rights of a fancied original contract against the encroachments of monarchs, are sowing ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... shake them off. Her mistress is her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Colisle, a coarse, vulgar, half-bred woman, whose husband acquired a sudden wealth from contracts and petroleum speculations, and who has in consequence set herself up for a leader of ton. A certain downright persistence and energy of character, acquired, it may be, in bullying the kitchen-maids at the country tavern where she began life, a certain lavish expenditure of her husband's profits, the vulgar display and profusion at her numerous balls, and her free-handed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... was downright beautiful. Miss Carrie reminds me of her sometimes, but she is not near so handsome as poor Miss Rose. She used to come here sometimes with her mother, and she and master would sit under that mulberry tree. I can see her now walking over the grass in her ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... had a defect. M. Gillenormand was worn out with hearing him tell about the love affairs that he had in the vicinity of the barracks in the Rue de Babylone. And then, Lieutenant Gillenormand sometimes came in his uniform, with the tricolored cockade. This rendered him downright intolerable. Finally, Father Gillenormand had said to his daughter: "I've had enough of that Theodule. I haven't much taste for warriors in time of peace. Receive him if you choose. I don't know but ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... very particular place in the school for herself. Once on the right road it had been only a matter of a few days before the girls accepted her, and only a matter of weeks before she was one of the leading members of her class. Her quiet humor and downright frankness made her a welcome addition to the school, as ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... own; not but what I have told a pretty round number in my life, not all in downright words, as I suppose you did, but in actions, or in some shabby circumlocutory way, leading people either to disbelieve the truth, or believe a falsehood. You know who is the father of lies, Margaret? Well! a great number of folk, thinking themselves very good, have odd sorts ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... was at that moment, and often after, useful for a stool. I am sure I sat for an hour in the baggage- room, and wretched enough it was; yet, when at last the word was passed to me and I picked up my bundles and got under way, it was only to exchange discomfort for downright ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 'm ashamed of you!" said Polly, with considerable heat. "To waste money in that way, when you knew perfectly well you could n't afford it, was—well, it was downright dishonest, that's what it was! To hear you talk about dogs, and lame horses, and club suppers, anybody would suppose you were a sporting man! Pray, what else do they do in that ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... always act so—though he will in five cases out of six, or oftener. Hence very erroneous views are held in relation to the courage of this animal. Some naturalists, led away by what appears to be a feeling of envy or anger, accuse the lion of downright cowardice, denying him a single noble quality of all those that have from earliest times been ascribed to him! Others, on the contrary, assert that he knows no fear, either of man or beast; and these endow him with many virtues besides courage. ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... stands, And, Milo-like, surveys his arms and hands; Then sighing thus, 'And am I now threescore? Ah, why, ye Gods! should two and two make four?' He said, and climb'd a stranded lighter's height, Shot to the black abyss, and plung'd downright: The senior's judgment all the crowd admire, Who but to sink the deeper rose the higher. "Next Smedley div'd; slow circles dimpled o'er The quaking mud, that clos'd and op'd no more. All look, all sigh, and call on Smedley lost; Smedley in vain resounds through all the coast. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... my dear Lady Betty,' said Flora, 'may, I conceive, persevere in his suit under very discouraging circumstances. Affection can (now and then) withstand very severe storms of rigour, but not a long polar frost of downright indifference. Don't, even with YOUR attractions, try the experiment upon any lover whose faith you value. Love will subsist on wonderfully little hope, but not ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... answered thoughtfully. "I'm beginning to think that some day I shall look back on my boyhood with downright incredulity. I shan't seem to have been ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... anecdotes, of which he was convinced he must possess a stock, of his father, the late General Joseph Reed. General Lafayette's countenance immediately fell: he endeavoured politely to evade Mr. Reed's request; at last, as Mr. Reed would take nothing short of downright refusal, the General was, at length, compelled to remark, "I am sorry to say, sir, that I am acquainted with no anecdotes of the late General Reed which it would be pleasant for his son or any of his friends to hear." Mr. R. having bowed himself ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... not until he had reigned for almost two years that something definite was done in relation to it by the Czar; and then as many obstacles were thrown in the way of the reform as would have served to disgust any man who had not been in downright earnest. The Czar then took matters into his own hands, so far as that was possible, and the work was pushed forward with considerable speed. There was much discussion, and there were many disappointments, in the course of the business; but through all the Czar held to his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... to say that the general tendency of the speeches was towards universal Emancipation, mental and physical. I doubt whether an English audience composed in so large proportion of the conventionally "respectable classes" ever listened to so much downright Democracy before. The French speakers, the French writers, were full of it, and the great event, at least of the last day's session, was the entrance of a body of fifteen French workmen, delegates to the World's Exhibition of the "Working Associations" of Paris, who came in a body ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... nature is wholly corrupt, is to drive men to despair, and that to suppose the righteousness of Christ sufficient to justify is to make it unnecessary to have any of our own. Though compelled to listen to such downright heresies, to hear himself described as knowing neither what he said nor whereof he affirmed, and as aiming only to gratify self sufficiency, pride and uncharitableness,—"I rejoiced," said this meek and holy man, "to receive the ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea
... This was downright generous of Mr. Cooke. We have all, no doubt, drawn our line between what is right and what is wrong, but I have often wondered how many of us with the world's indorsement across our backs trespass as little on the other side ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... when we attacked the pirate's stronghold the other day," observed Adair. "Well, I hope that my turn will come before long; I don't feel as if I had any right to wear starch in my shirt-collar till I've taken part in some real downright fighting." ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... palms must be. Even their size must be very inconvenient. You and Bentham must hate the monocotyledons, for what work the Orchideae must have been, and Gramineae and Cyperaceae will be. I am rather despondent about myself, and my troubles are of an exactly opposite nature to yours, for idleness is downright misery to me, as I find here, as I cannot forget my discomfort for an hour. I have not the heart or strength at my age to begin any investigation lasting years, which is the only thing which I enjoy; and I have no little jobs which I can do. So I ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... traveller. "Ninepence," replied the waiter. Anger, consternation, and incredulity were all depicted, by turns, on the visitor's cheek. "What!" he shouted, "ninepence. Why, I could buy a dozen bottles for half-a-crown. It's downright robbery to ask ninepence for one bottle. You've made a mistake." "I've made no mistake," said the waiter; "I was told to ask ninepence. But," (at this point he sidled up to the traveller and whispered, ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... abusers, whom we have pointed out to you, and whom you will soon discover for yourselves; till you once go earnestly to work, and have put away such unmanly and unchristian doings, so that we and ours may remain secure in the presence of you and yours; for such downright injustice, such words of scandal and shame, we are no longer able to endure. Take your measures accordingly." On the 27th of May, followed the declaration of Zurich still more ample in ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... notice into effect upon the blushing girl; and the example, being contagious, was followed both by the doctor and Mr. Brownlow: some people affirm that Harry Maylie had been observed to set it, originally, in a dark room adjoining; but the best authorities consider this downright scandal: he being ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... truth in his letter—I did say that the firm of Hillingdon and McFreeland were guilty of shady and illegal practices, and that the High Commissioner in Fiji would bring them up with a round turn some day. But, as you know, all the rest is false—downright lies." ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... much. Every now and then he will give me a downright lecture, or he will write me a letter like that; but he never ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... have been Genevieve who said it, of course, though the fact that she was under water more than half the time might be advanced as her excuse for failing to say it. But who could venture to excuse the downright callous way in which she exclaimed, "Already? Why we've just got in! Come along and dive through that wave. ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... there leaves them, and goes no further. So up and to my office, where we sat, and among other things I had a fray with Sir J. Minnes in defence of my Will in a business where the old coxcomb would have put a foot upon him, which was only in Jack Davis and in him a downright piece of knavery in procuring a double ticket and getting the wrong one paid as well as the second was to the true party. But it appeared clear enough to the board that Will was true in it. Home to dinner, and after dinner by water to the Temple, and there took ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... tears came again into my eyes almost as often as I looked at the description,—they may again. You do not believe this fact, nor that these are my real feelings; but that the whole is affected, or as you express it, downright foppery. My friend, I tell you it is truth; and that it is true and will be truth when you and I are no more; and will exist as long as men with their natural feelings shall exist" (Corr. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... this kind of life, he began to want some more fierce excitement. He had tried making downright love to Elsie, with no great success as yet, in his own opinion. The girl was capricious in her treatment of him, sometimes scowling and repellent, sometimes familiar, very often, as she used to be of old, teasing and malicious. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... a renewal of happiness to her heart, wearied with jealousy, to find one to whom old times were precious, and who took her up where he had last seen her. His blunt ways, and downright attacks, were a refreshment to a spirit chafing against the external smoothness and refinement of her way of life, and the pleasure of yielding to his arguments was something new and unexampled. She liked to gain the bright approving look, and with her ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... persuaded wife, who had been trembling in the kitchen all the while, that we had better go out quiet again, as there was nobody in the house but us: I had tried that woman's door—and we might perhaps be taken for the murderers. And so we did; and that's the downright, honest truth, my lord. I'm rightly served; but God bless you, doant hurt the woman—my wife, my lord, these thirty years. Five-and-twenty years ago come May, which I shall never see, we buried our two children. ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... traditions of Teutonic sentiment. With something of the rough tone and temper of the great peasant who initiated the German Reformation, a man who had himself sprung from the people, and who knew of what he was speaking, here set down in downright fashion the actual facts as to the position of women in Germany, as well as what he conceived to be the claims of justice in regard to that position, slashing with equal vigour alike at the absurdities of conventional ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... his vein in weekly journalism, and for nearly forty years was the stormy petrel of Canadian politics. From England there came, among others, Dr. John Rolph, shrewd and politic, and Captain John Matthews, a half-pay artillery officer. Peter Perry, downright and rugged and of a homely eloquence, represented the Loyalists of the Bay of Quinte, which was the center of Canadian Methodism. Among the newer comers from the United States, the foremost were Barnabas ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... I don't say that he didn't deserve it, for he did; but I don't see it quite so strongly as I did when I was living on bread and water, and with nothing to do but to think of how I could get even with him when I got out; besides, I never calculated upon getting anyone else into a mess, and I am downright sorry that I got you into one, Mr. Wyatt. However, the job is done, and it is no ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... does not concern the orbit of a planet and there is no use talking and acting as if it did." This sense of humour often saves the American in a situation in which the Englishman would have recourse to downright brutality; it unties the Gordian knot instead of cutting it. A too strong conviction of being in the right often leads to conflicts that would be avoided by a more humorous appreciation of the relative importance of phenomena. To look ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... who are much used to children, will quarrel with us for what we have said of early prodigies of wit. People, who merely talk to children for the amusement of the moment, may admire their "lively nonsense," and will probably think the simplicity of mind that we prefer, is downright stupidity. The habit of reasoning is seldom learned by children who are much taken notice of for their sprightly repartees; but we have observed that children, after they have learned to reason, as they grow up and become acquainted with the manners and customs of the world, are by no means ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... manifestly become of a larger girth. I am speaking only upon distant recollection; but I should judge it to have been three or four inches larger round, or perhaps more. His voice was stronger, his manner more confident and downright, and, although not less emphatic, yet decidedly less impulsively changeful. I can recall his reading from an ancient author, translating as he went, a passage about the making of the first man; and I remember it from the subject and from the easy flow of his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... Girbal, "makes no difference for Touache, and does not prevent him from being a downright ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... became moody, and downright unhappy, and went more and more to the "Red Lion," seeking comfort there now as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... that she had seen a young seal in a comfortable overcoat, sitting pensively upon the pinnacle of Seal Rock, and had distinctly heard the familiar words of a Methodist hymn. Upon inquiry the tale was discovered to be founded upon fact. The identity of this seal could no longer be denied without downright blasphemy, and in all the old chronicles of that period not a doubt is ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... Nobody else seemed to want to take the job, and so I took it, and I flatter myself that I made a pretty good job of it. The Germans have an inhuman way of cutting up their verbs. Now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this world when it's all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up. But that's just what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it away over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they just shovel ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Coates, Mrs. Atkins, Mrs. Hicks, Mr. Piper and wife, Joseph Fuller and wife, Tho. Fuller and wife, Dame Durrant, myself and wife, and Mr. French's family. After supper our behaviour was far from that of serious, harmless mirth; it was downright obstreperious, mixed with a great deal of folly and stupidity. Our diversion was dancing or jumping about, without a violin or any musick, singing of foolish healths, and drinking all the time as fast as it could be well poured down; and the parson of ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... meet after many years, though their heads be gray and their cheeks wrinkled, there will still be a touch of the old passion as their hands meet for a moment. Methinks that love never dies, unless it be murdered by downright ill-usage. It may be so murdered, but even, ill-usage will more often fail than succeed in that enterprise. How, then, could Harry fail to love the woman whom he had loved first, when she returned to him still young, still beautiful, and told ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... revolted from Parisian frivolity, in which he found only sensuality and coarseness, disguised under a thin veneering of social grace. He abhorred French music in these bitter terms: "The French are and always will be downright donkeys. They cannot sing, they scream." It was just at this time that Gluck and Piccini were having their great art-duel. We get a glimpse of the pious tendency of the young composer in his characterization of Voltaire: "The ungodly arch-villain, ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... a fool, Sam, a regular, downright fool, and I'll tell 'em so when I get a chance. But it was my ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... that it was a grievance that he would not play regularly, and there was a sort of general idea that if he chose he could do most things well. After that fight he changed altogether. He took to cricket in downright earnest, and was soon acknowledged to be the best bat and best bowler in the school. Before that it had been regarded as certain that when the captain left I should be elected, but when the time came he got a majority of votes. I should not have minded ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... shrugged his shoulders. "We two, at any rate," he said, "won't have the responsibility. I only hope it will turn out all right! We've got some damned hilly country for the man[oe]uvres this time, as it happens. One part lies close to the frontier, and is over 2000 feet high. Downright mountain-artillery I call it!" he growled in conclusion. But it was impossible to oppose the express orders ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... the theoretical structure, with no corresponding asymmetry in the system of experience, is intolerable. If we assume the ether to be at rest relatively to K, but in motion relatively to K', the physical equivalence of K and K' seems to me from the logical standpoint, not indeed downright incorrect, but ...
— Sidelights on Relativity • Albert Einstein
... youth, of lightsome vacant heart, 530 Whose every day was made of melody, Hears not the voice of mirth.—The shrill-tongued shrew, Meek as the turtle-dove, forgets her chiding. Here are the wise, the generous, and the brave; The just, the good, the worthless, the profane; The downright clown, and perfectly well-bred; The fool, the churl, the scoundrel, and the mean; The supple statesman, and the patriot stern; The wrecks of nations, and the spoils of time, With all the lumber of six thousand years. 540 Poor man!—how happy once in thy first state! ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... idea of the author's sins of omission and commission. It will be seen, for example, that the tone of the entire passage is altered. The bit of repartee in the last sentence is wholly foreign to the Beowulf manner, which is outright and downright—the very opposite of subtilty. The false manner is evident at once when we compare the reply of the hero in the original, 'Thou art the murderer of thine own brethren, and thou shalt be damned in Hell. Wait ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... the northern cause. In 1887 it even became necessary for him to withdraw his acceptance of an invitation to attend a meeting of the Grand Army in St. Louis, because of danger that he might be subjected to downright insult.[4] ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... honest fellow's feelings were no study to himself; he knew nothing but the pleasure and the pain of them; but, I believe it was not mainly for himself that he was sorry. Like Othello, "the pity of it" haunted him: he had taken Alice for a downright girl, about whom there was and could be no mistake; and the first hot blast of prosperity had swept her away like a hectic leaf. What were all the shops dressed out in holly and mistletoe, what were all the rushing ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... attended, the Sabbath was kept holy, the women were one and all sober and thrifty, the men were fairly satisfactory except on Saturday nights, there was no want, little sickness, and very seldom downright sin. The expression downright sin is Mrs. Morrison's own,—heaven forbid that I should have anything to do with such an expression—and I suppose she meant by it thieving, murder, and other grossnesses that would bring the sinner, as she ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... all the stitches in vogue during the first era of needlework pictures. A single glance at one of the early specimens, though it may not charm, fills one with amazement at the amount of toil, ingenuity, patience, and downright love for the work the ancient needlewoman must have possessed. Not only pictures, however, were made in petit point. Many dainty little accessories of the toilet gave scope to the delicate fancy and nimble fingers of the ladies who had found ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... I grant you that the picture must be idealised if you're to appeal to more than one in a thousand. The working classes detest anything that tries to represent their daily life. It isn't because that life is too painful; no, no; it's downright snobbishness. Dickens goes down only with the best of them, and then solely because of his strength in farce ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... especially when we adopt the more accurate rendering of the Revised Version, 'received Him with blows.' Mark's account, then, is this: that, as soon as the unanimous howl of condemnation had beep uttered, some of the 'judges'(!) fell upon Jesus with spitting and clumsy ridicule and downright violence, and that afterwards He was handed over to the underlings, who were not slow to copy the example set them at the upper end of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... with. It is not for him to lend the sanction of his presence to a meeting with which he could not sit to its final termination. It is not for him to stand associated, for a single hour, with an assemblage of men who begin with hypocrisy, and end with downright blackguardism. It is not for him to watch the progress of the coming ribaldry, and to hit the well selected moment when talk and turbulence and boisterous merriment are on the eve of bursting forth upon the company, and carrying them forward to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... all through not to tell a direct falsehood," said Master Joseph; "it is bad enough to deceive people, without being guilty of downright lying." ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... damsel took a seat beside her, it would be certain to attract the papa or chaperon, to the spot, to see what was going on, as their most likely subject of conversation would have a strong leaning towards a flirtation, or downright love-making, at which nearly all the Spaniards are great adepts; the flowery expressions of their language being peculiarly suitable for ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... didn't ring at all, but just walked in with his uncle in tow. The minute I saw Joseph P. I knew I needn't be scared of him; he just looked real common. He was little and thin and kind of bored-looking, with grey hair and whiskers, and his clothes were next door to downright shabbiness. If it hadn't been for the thought of that chef, I wouldn't have felt a bit ashamed of my ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... contemptuously. I don't even attempt to justify the Indian treatment of captured civilians and noncombatants, but nevertheless, I absorbed quite a few of my grandfather's ideals and views about war, and it's downright disgusting to see him so falsely represented by the authors of the ...
— Pushbutton War • Joseph P. Martino
... much the same relation to truth as the abstract absolute process of calculation has to concrete individual things; much of it more than justifies altogether that "black or white" method of criticism of which I wrote in the preceding chapter. They were as downright and unconsidering, as little capable of the reasoned middle attitude. Proudhon, perceiving that the world was obsessed by a misconception of the scope of property whereby the many were enslaved to ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... becoming so urgent in his appeal, that I finally yielded a reluctant consent to the project, cautioning them under no circumstances, to remain away from the train more than two or three hours. This they faithfully promised not to do, and departed; notwithstanding Jerry pronounced it as downright foolish a proceedin' ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... prince, and firm to his friends and servants; and though he might speak big, and therein would be borne out, yet was he the more dreadful, but less harmful, and far from the practice of the Lord of Leicester's instructions, for he was downright; and I have heard those that both knew him well and had interest in him, say merrily of him that his Latin and dissimulation were alike; and that his custom of swearing and obscenity in speaking made him seem a worse Christian than he was, and a better knight of her ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... delay. His friends, however, kept him back until they had obtained a written safe-conduct from the Emperor, who was then hunting in the environs. In the mean time a distinguished friend of Cajetan, one Urbanus of Serralonga, tried to persuade him, in a flippant and, as Luther thought, a downright Italian manner, to come forward and simply pronounce six letters—"Revoco" ("I retract"). Urbanus asked him with a smile if he thought his sovereign would risk his country for his sake. "God forbid!" answered Luther. "Where then do you ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... afterward. This was my first introduction to the lady, and I was very favorably impressed by her; not so much on account of her personal appearance, for she was but a little wo man and had no pretensions to beauty, as on account of a certain simplicity, and hearty, downright kindness in her manner, as well as of an excellent frankness and good sense in her conversation. One of the guests present, who saw how she had interested me, and who spoke of her in the highest terms, surprised me by inquiring if I should ever have supposed that quiet, good-humored ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... a downright lunatic, she moved back from him with a frightened gesture; but glancing again at his bright, manly face, she said in a ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... appeared to be exhausted, for he took no notice of the order repeated to him, and the impressiveness of Pearl was wasted. Dory was disgusted at his overwhelming defeat, and he had not philosophy enough to submit to it with good grace. In fact, he was downright mad at the treatment he had received from his ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... difficult to say what distress the sudden removal of this amiable and accomplished Scholar occasions me, just as I am finishing my task. I consign these pages to the press with a sense of downright reluctance,—(constrained however by the importance of the subject,)—seeing that he is no longer among us either to accept or to dispute a single proposition. All I can do is to erase every word which might have occasioned him the least annoyance; and ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... it's nought but toiling At baking, roasting, frying, boiling; An' tho' the gentry first are stechin, Yet ev'n the ha' folk fill their pechan Wi' sauce, ragouts, an' sic like trashtrie, That's little short o' downright wastrie. Our whipper-in, wee, blasted wonner, Poor, worthless elf, it eats a dinner, Better than ony tenant-man His Honour has in a' the lan': An' what poor cot-folk pit their painch in, I ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Henry Clay wrested his education from books, experience, and downright hard thinking; and we Americans still like to tell of the immortal Lincoln poring over the pages of his few and hard-won volumes before the glare of the wood-fire on the hearth, or the uncertain light of the tallow dip. Benjamin Franklin got his ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... inconsistent with Darwinism as they are with democracy or with any other intelligent proposition ever offered. But these unintelligent propositions were offered; and the ultimate result was this rather important one: that the harshness of Utilitarianism began to turn into downright tyranny. That beautiful faith in human nature and in freedom which had made delicate the dry air of John Stuart Mill; that robust, romantic sense of justice which had redeemed even the injustices of Macaulay—all that seemed slowly and sadly to be drying ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... the country comes into the town in the shape of a downright storm of wind and rain, which shakes the tiles on the roofs, and now and then flings one after you, while the streets become rivers, and every corner an ambush from which the whirlwind makes a sudden attack upon your umbrella, and, after a more or less prolonged ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... while the insane element is often cropping out in the shape of extravagances or irregularities in thought or action, which, according to the stand-point they are viewed from, are regarded either as gross eccentricity, or undisciplined powers, or downright insanity. For every manifestation of this kind they may show no lack of plausible reasons, calculated to mislead the superficial observer; but still the fact remains, that these traits, which are never witnessed in persons of well-balanced ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... downright selfish," said his wife, "If we tried to keep you here Henry Brimstead would never forgive us. He talks about you morning, noon and night. Any one would think that you was the Samson that slew ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... with salvolatile. Miss Pinkerton's attachment was, as may be supposed from the high position and eminent virtues of that lady, calm and dignified; but Miss Jemima had already whimpered several times at the idea of Amelia's departure; and, but for fear of her sister, would have gone off in downright hysterics, like the heiress (who paid double) of St. Kitt's. Such luxury of grief, however, is only allowed to parlour-boarders. Honest Jemima had all the bills, and the washing, and the mending, and ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not answer his question. While the explanation might seem to be fairly plausible, he felt positive the man was telling a downright lie; and Max believed he knew an ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... and did not complain; he read all Walter Scott's works to me, which were very interesting. Sometimes on Sunday, when the weather was bad, instead of leaving home, he bought something nice, and we made a downright banquet in my room; after which we amused ourselves with reading, and I was almost as much pleased as if I had been at the theater. This is to show you that it would not be difficult to live with me, and that I will do what I can to make things pleasant and agreeable. And ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... for not being explicit with her; for going away from her without one honest, manly, downright word; for sneaking off without telling her that she was more than life to me, and that if she cared for me as I cared for her I would go on with her to Venice, and meet ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... this girl's blunt, downright manner of speech, but Peg went on, quite indifferent to his ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... reassuring, although I still felt there was something behind her light manner which intimately concerned me. But I had learned to count on her downright honesty, and her words, "Nothing that cannot be helped, my dear," steadied me, gave me hope that no matter what trouble she had to tell me, she had ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... "how dare you strike your sister? You deserve a downright good thrashing for such a deed, and—mark you this, boy!—if ever you so much as attempt to do such a thing again and I get to hear of it, I will rope's-end you until you can neither stand, sit, nor lie down. You ought to ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... should plunge in medias res upon a sketch of De Quincey's life; were it not a rudeness amounting to downright profanity to omit the important ceremony of prelibation, and that at a banquet to which, implicitly, gods are invited. The reader will assuredly unite with me in all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... be discussed in the hostile dogmatic tone adopted in both countries by those who only know their own. The ceremonies that are foreign to you impress you, while those you have been used to all your life have become a second nature. An Englishwoman feels downright uncomfortable in her high stuff gown at night, and a German lady brought up at one of the great German Courts told me that when she stayed in an English country house and put on what she called a ball dress for dinner every night, she ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... evening after this sale, he no more thought of saying his prayers than would a man who had taken God Almighty by the horn, patted Him on the rump, and sold Him, and let some strange boy urge Him on with a bit of strap. He felt that he was an evil man, a downright ungodly man, and he asked his wife what the ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... masses of unshaped metal, caring little for immediate effect or minute dexterity of stroke, but knowing full well that the emotional energy of their temperaments was capable of fusing the most intractable material, and that in the end they would produce their great, downright effect. Their spirits rose and fell, but the case was desperate, copy had to be despatched for the current serial. Good and bad had to make up the tale against time, and revelling in the very exuberance and excess of their humour, the novelists ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... aid of the bath, the soda, and the coffee, and all the thousand remedies which a skilful valet has ever at hand, at three o'clock on the same day he rose and dressed, and in an hour was again at the illustrious bow-window, sneering with Charles Annesley, or laughing downright ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... even Ady was a downright disbeliever. He defended Scot from the report "that he held an opinion that Witches are not, for it was neither his Tenent nor is it mine." Alas, Ady does not enlighten us as to just what was his opinion. Certainly his witches were creatures without power.[50] What, then, were they? Were ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... the most opposite views on this subject find their expression in current literature. To stir up all these controversies is not my object, but I want to state quite generally that it is under all circumstances a downright evil to try to follow out any theoretical system to its logical development, whether the one selected be that of Captain Plinzner[24] or another's. We have neither such a uniform type of horse nor sufficiently skilled riders as to be able to employ the ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... fled; mother frantic; hard, very hard to know how best to comfort. A woman is a wonderful network of cross-wires, and when these wires get unstrung or entangled, the result is most distressing. In presence of such, one feels hopelessly lost, and all one can do is to—walk away. And yet, for downright, dogged perseverance—for silent, struggling endurance—for quiet, patient suffering—commend me to a woman. What would become of Man ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... shook the dampness from them. As he handed them to the checker, he looked casually around. Dorrine was nowhere in sight, but he hadn't expected her to be. There would be no point in their meeting physically; it might even be downright dangerous. ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... and he took his aunt's hand as he said, "I thank you for your kindness, and more than all for your downright sincerity. When I came here it was to make but a formal call. With the exception of one friend, I believed that I stood utterly alone in the world— that no one cared about what I did or what became of me. I was ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... I hate her. I do indeed. It isn't love for me now so much as downright malice against Palliser, because he baulked her project before. She is a wicked old woman. Some of us fellows are wicked enough—you and ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... Africa, which presages a severe storm. It appears at first in the form of an ox-eye, but soon overspreads the whole hemisphere, accompanied by a violent wind which scatters ships in all directions, and many are sunk downright. Also, a water-fowl. Also, the smaller ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... merchants, was already in a fair way of getting rid of his portion in riotous living. Nothing does a young American so much good, under such circumstances, as to induce him to travel. It makes or breaks at once. If a downright fool, he is plucked by European adventurers in so short a time, that the agony is soon over. If only vain and frivolous, because young and ill-educated, the latter being a New York endemic, but with some foundation of native mind, ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... the second place such teachers are disposed to bring the people into downright bondage and to bind their conscience by forcing laws upon them and teaching work-righteousness. The effect is that fear impels them to do what has been pounded into them, as if they were bond-slaves, while ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... I own; not but what I have told a pretty round number in my life, not all in downright words, as I suppose you did, but in actions, or in some shabby circumlocutory way, leading people either to disbelieve the truth, or believe a falsehood. You know who is the father of lies, Margaret? Well! ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... nay, it is perhaps a widely diffused assumption that even in antiquity educated and unbiased persons held the same view of the religion of their people as we do. In reality both assumptions are erroneous: our "atheism" in regard to ancient paganism is of recent date, and in antiquity itself downright denial of the existence of the gods was a comparatively rare phenomenon. The demonstration of this fact, rather than a consideration of the various intermediate positions taken up by the thinkers of antiquity in their desire to avoid a complete rupture with the traditional ideas of ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... why Mary Todd married Lincoln. He was still poor; so poor that after marriage they lived at the Globe Tavern on four dollars a week. And the lady had been sought by prosperous men! The lowliness of Lincoln's origin went ill with her high notions of her family's importance. She was downright, high-tempered, dogmatic, but social; he was devious, slow to wrath, tentative, solitary; his very appearance, then as afterward, was against him. Though not the hideous man he was later made out to be—the ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... enthusiastic promoter of workingmen's associations, and a leading spirit among the so-called Christian Socialists. Needless to add that, though never for one moment sundered one from the other in heart or affection by differences of opinion, the two could not work together in this field. Downright, practical George has his objections, and states them. Listen: "'You don't want to divide other people's property?' 'No.' 'Then why call yourselves Socialists?' 'But we couldn't help ourselves: other people ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... being New Year's Day, we passed a more than usually merry time. Stories were told, old ballads were sung, while Roger de Coverley was danced in downright earnest by most of those who were present. By midnight, however, the old hall was silent; each of us had repaired to his room, and most, I expect, were quietly asleep, when a terrible scream was heard, after which there were shouts for help and hysterical cries. The sounds seemed ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... the collar of command upon any pretence whatever, and are so ready to usurp upon dominion, every one does so naturally aspire to liberty and power, that no utility whatever derived from the wit or valour of those he employs ought to be so dear to a superior as a downright and sincere obedience. To obey more upon the account of understanding than of subjection, is to corrupt the office of command —[Taken from Aulus Gellius, i. 13.]—; insomuch that P. Crassus, the same whom the Romans reputed five times happy, at the time when he was consul ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... of them. Their father is away, their mother won't look at them! What will become of me until Eva gets well and behaves like a human being? I never promised to be an aunt to twins; I never did like twins; I think they're downright vulgar!" ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the partial eclipse into which Mr. Garland's reputation passed. As a matter of fact, the causes were more fundamental than the mere fickleness of literary reputation or than the demands of editors and public that he repeat himself forever. In that first brilliant cycle of stories this downright pioneer worked with the material which of all materials he knew best and over which his imagination played most eagerly. From them, however, he turned to pleas for the single tax and to exposures of legislative corruption and imbecility about which he neither knew nor cared so much as he knew ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... "Oh, she was wicked—downright wicked!" declared Mary, with some passion—"Any girl who would plan and scheme to marry an old man for his money must be a worthless creature. I wish I had been in that Lucy ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... on a grassy flat not far from the ranges; hope to find water early to-morrow, as our horses are too poor to go long without it. Was obliged to abandon police-horse Brick to-day, as he was completely done up. Nothing but downright poverty is the cause of his giving in; and the same in the case of Fame and Little Padbury, which we abandoned over a month ago. They were poor when they left, and have only had very dry grass ever since. It is a wonder to me they all do not give in, as many are mere skeletons. ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... greatest part of Dickens, as you may read the greatest part of Hawthorne or Tolstoy, and not once be reminded of literature as a business or a cult, but you can hardly read a paragraph, hardly a sentence, of Thackeray's without being reminded of it either by suggestion or downright allusion. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... his heart, sae smooth his speech, His breath like caller air; His very foot has music in't As he comes up the stair. And shall I see his face again? And shall I hear him speak? I'm downright dizzy wi' the thought, In troth ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... anything wonderful in the dark, deep eyes at all,—they looked downright wicked to him. He took Carol away hurriedly, and questioned her feverishly to find out if Mrs. Waldemar had put any fresh nonsense ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... should make as free with a sister of mine as I have made with the sisters and daughters of others. But then I took care never to promise any thing I intended not to perform. A modest ear should as soon have heard downright obscenity from my lips, as matrimony, if I had not intended it. Young ladies are generally ready enough to believe we mean honourably, if they love us; and it would look lie a strange affront to their virtue and charms, that it should be supposed needful to ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... them out of their sleep, (for they are a sluggish sleepy animal), they would raise up their heads; snort and snarl, and look as fierce as if they meant to devour us; but as we advanced upon them they always run away, so that they are downright bullies. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... basis of a ruling trait or passion (a notable simplification of actual life be it observed in passing); and, placing these typified traits in juxtaposition in their conflict and contrast, struck the spark of comedy. Downright, as his name indicates, is "a plain squire"; Bobadill's humour is that of the braggart who is incidentally, and with delightfully comic effect, a coward; Brainworm's humour is the finding out of things to the end of fooling everybody: of course he is fooled in the end himself. ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... sought his with tenderness. All his long life of grasping greed had been spent in money-getting and money-saving. No sense of right or justice had ever restrained him; but only the fear of getting caught had kept him from downright stealing. Year after year he had added to his hoard, carefully invested it, and now in a few days of desperate dread it had all ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... she is a small, slender woman with rather quick, decided movements and that her voice is that of a refined person. He is sure she is a young woman, but he can furnish no better description of her than this. He claims he was very nervous at the time of their meeting. I figure he was downright excited, filled as he was with guilty apprehensions, and no doubt because of his excitement he took less notice of her than he otherwise might. Besides, you must remember that the place of rendezvous was a fairly dark spot on rather a ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... little time ago you were singing a Gypsy song—a downright heathen Gypsy song. I heard it about half an hour ago when I ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... liberty, as was evinced by Lear Green, made the efforts of the most ardent friends, who were in the habit of aiding fugitives, seem feeble in the extreme. Of all the heroes in Canada, or out of it, who have purchased their liberty by downright bravery, through perils the most hazardous, none deserve more praise ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... England the reign of Andros wrought no downright persecution. He suspended the charters, and, with an irresponsible council in each colony, assumed all legislative as well as administrative power. Rhode Island submitted tamely. Her sister colony did the same, save that, at ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... attached to one another; and yet as wretched as wretched could be. How are you going to account for it? It is vastly important just because it is so common. Domestic difficulties rarely arise out of downright wickedness. Husband and wife may be as free from all outward fault as poor Mr. and Mrs. Cardew. Mark Rutherford thinks that Mr. Cardew was chiefly to blame, and his verdict is probably just. A man takes a considerably longer stride ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... the lake. They allowed the people to trample the grass. They threw papers and banana skins about. And they wasted! His years in Germany had taught him to regard all these things as sacrilege, and the last as downright criminal. He was lonesome for his Germany. That was plain. He hated it, and loved it, much as he hated and loved the woman who had so nearly spoiled his life. The maelstrom known as the southwest corner of State and Madison streets ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... for him; and with the beginning of the fourth chapter, Condy had finally come to know the enormous difficulties, the exasperating complications, the discouragements that begin anew with every paragraph, the obstacles that refuse to be surmounted, and all the pain, the labor, the downright mental travail and anguish that fall to the lot of the writer ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... love the unhighschooled ways Ol' farmers hed when I was younger— Their talk wuz meatier and would stay, While book-froth seems to whet your hunger. For puttin' in a downright lick 'twixt humbug's eyes, there's few can metch it. An' then it helves my thoughts as slick, ez stret grained hickory does ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... liberal tone. This ingenuous young man of course despises the confessional. He goes to confess because the law obliges him to do so; but the law cannot dictate what he must confess. Therefore, he ventures as near downright burlesque as he dares, and (if the account he gives of the matter be true) puts off his confessor with some well-known fact, as that he has blasphemed. Of course he has blasphemed, blasphemy being as common as the forms of salutation in Venice. So the priest, who ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... sadness. No need of spring sunshine to thaw his song, for it never freezes. Never shall you hear anything wintry from his warm breast; no pinched cheeping, no wavering notes between sorrow and joy; his mellow, fluty voice is ever tuned to downright gladness, as ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... comparatively small number of whites by immense masses of mounted horsemen. When their weapons were inferior, as on the first occasions when they were brought into contact with troops carrying breech-loading arms of precision, or when they tried the tactics of downright fighting, and of charging fairly in the open, they were often themselves beaten or repulsed with fearful slaughter by mere handfuls of whites. In the years 1867-68, all the horse Indians of the plains were at war with us, and many battles were fought with varying fortune. ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Sane Voting is not a short cut to the millennium, it is no way of changing human nature, and in the new type of assembly, as in the old, spite, vanity, indolence, self-interest, and downright dishonesty will play their part. But to object to a reform on that account is not a particularly effective objection. These things will play their part, but it will be a much smaller part in the new than in the old. It is like objecting to some projected and long-needed railway ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... the yard, and approaching to see what was going on, found that a preacher was pouring forth anathemas against the king and the Royal party, and inciting the citizens to throw themselves heart and soul into the cause. Especially severe was he upon waverers, who, he said, were worse than downright enemies, as, while the one withstood the Parliament openly in fair fight, the others were shifted to and fro with each breeze, and none could say whether they were friends or enemies. Passing through the cathedral, ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... with it, but the simple truth is he cannot help knowing that he has a wide and lively intelligence, and it pleases him to know it, and to be reminded of it, especially in an oblique and tangential sort of way, so as not to look like downright flattery. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... until the time of their marriage. It is only in the rarest of cases that the parents feel it needful to hire any kind of tutor for THEM. What the average girl knows is simply what her mother can teach her. Perhaps a certain number of Athenian women (of good family, too) are downright illiterate; but this is not very often the case. A normal girl will learn to read and write, with her mother for school mistress.[*] Very probably she will be taught to dance, and sometimes to play on some instrument, ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... matter which appears under the title of "High Life in New York" is accompanied by a note, signed by the publishers, who are naturally supposed to know something of the real value of the works they issue, in which "editors are forewarned that it is a volume which, for downright drollery and hearty humor, has never had its equal in the productions of any American pen," and are otherwise admonished in various ways calculated to inspire lofty expectations, and to fill the mind with exalted visions of coming joy. But when it appears, on examination, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... dear fellow, to what the habit of bombasticising in newspapers brings you to. Here am I writing a downright article. Does the mind have its ruts, like a road? I stop; for I rob the mail, and I rob myself, and you may be yawning—to be continued in our next; I hear the second bell, which summons me to one of those abundant breakfasts the ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... great fancy to her. I think I begin to appreciate her fascination; it's her courage and her candor together. Most girls are so uncertain and capricious. It's delightful to meet such a straightforward and downright creature." ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... "You will make me downright angry with you, Anna, if you talk such nonsense," Mary said, severely. "You know very well that I have always made up mind that nothing shall induce me to marry and give up my freedom, at any rate for ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... she had just made. Curiously wanting as she seemed both in timidity and in levity, she was to a certainty not self-conscious—she was extraordinarily simple. Mr. Longdon looked at her now with an evident surrender to his extreme interest, and it might well have perplexed him to see her at once so downright as from experience and yet of so fresh and ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... never studied with personal interest the fine art of selling. He does not realize that ignorance of salesmanship, and consequent non-use of the selling process, almost always are responsible for the merely partial success or the downright failure in life of the man who deserves to win, but ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... don't want to seem severe, but I cannot bear a noise. I am so worn out when I come from the office. It seems each day my head aches worse than it did the day before." Miss Dorcas sighed. "And if it isn't a downright ache when I come home, it begins to pound as soon as I look at this book—" she eyed the account-book open before her—"I hoped you could have some new shoes this month. Those are downright shabby. But there isn't any money for them. I don't see how I am going to pay ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... suspicions on the purity of their own minds. And young persons, who talk and think in this way, are in extreme danger of falling into sinful habits. As to the volumes before us, the authors have, in their fanatical panegyrics of virginity, made use of language downright profane.' ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... follow, though in better order. Union and Confederate generals alike were astonished at the sudden change. McDowell found it impossible to stem the tide once set in, and gave orders to fall back across Bull Run to Centreville, where his reserves were stationed. As the retreat went on it turned to a downright rout. The Confederates made only a feeble pursuit, but fear of pursuit spread alarm through the flying ranks, demoralized by long marching and hard fighting. Baggage and ammunition-wagons, ambulances, private vehicles which ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Sylla was engaged with Mithridates's generals in Boeotia; the consuls, from factious opposition, were fallen to downright fighting, wherein Octavius prevailing, drove Cinna out of the city for attempting despotic government, and made Cornelius Merula consul in his stead; while Cinna, raising forces in other parts of Italy, carried the war against them. As soon as Marius heard of this, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... herself (before she left home) a "speckled beauty," she began to feel very low in her mind. And there was only one thing that kept her from being downright sad. All the sightseers agreed that she ...
— The Tale of Henrietta Hen • Arthur Scott Bailey
... was taken into Clive's confidence, and through Crackthorpe very likely the whole mess became acquainted with his passion. These young fellows, who had been early introduced into the world, gave Clive small hopes of success, putting to him, in their downright phraseology, the point of which he was already aware, that Miss Newcome was intended for his superiors, and that he had best not make his mind uneasy by sighing for those beautiful grapes which were ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Lady Betty,' said Flora, 'may, I conceive, persevere in his suit under very discouraging circumstances. Affection can (now and then) withstand very severe storms of rigour, but not a long polar frost of downright indifference. Don't, even with YOUR attractions, try the experiment upon any lover whose faith you value. Love will subsist on wonderfully little hope, but ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... out on its journey at the reputable hour of three in the afternoon, by pretending to start a coach at five o'clock in the morning, was an imposition "tolerable" only in Dogberry's sense of the word—it was "not to be endured." And then, the downright absurdity of the undertaking! for admitting that the proprietors might prevail on some poor idiot to act as coachman, where were they to entrap a dozen mad people for passengers? We often experience an irresistible impulse to interfere, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... nearly all human passions which lend themselves to comedy or farce. Sordid avarice, lavish prodigality, shameless vice, womanly resignation, artless coquetry, greed for money, downright hypocrisy, would-be gentility, self-sufficient vanity, fashionable swindling, misanthropy, heartlessness, plain common-sense, knowledge of the world, coarse jealousy, irresolution, impudence, pride of birth, egotism, self-conceit, pusillanimity, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... I think so! I know so! Wasn't there a sign up not to? Why, taking blackberries when there's a sign up is not much better than downright stealing!" ...
— A Little Question in Ladies' Rights • Parker Fillmore
... to give an original turn to their expressions. After all, it is judicious, in the composition of such affairs, to follow the briefest and most usual formulas, unless, indeed, you desire to introduce and recommend some particular person in downright reality, and then the farther you deviate from mere customary expressions the better. And if you are truly in earnest, you need be at no loss what to say: ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... resist them, as he did sometimes, or whether he would lie, which he never did. Holt instructing the boy on this point, however, that if to keep silence is not to lie, as it certainly is not, yet silence is, after all, equivalent to a negation—and therefore a downright No, in the interest of justice or your friend, and in reply to a question that may be prejudicial to either, is not criminal, but, on the contrary, praiseworthy; and as lawful a way as the other of eluding a wrongful demand. For ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... said Dan. "Cheer up, lad. There's fellers worse off than you!" An inspiration lit up his honest and downright brain for a moment. "Why," he said, "it's better to be you than be a feller like Bill that never had a fancy in his life. You've lost a lot, maybe; but you can't lose a thing you ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... voluntary actions which depend on the will, it is in some respect more improperly said, that he is unable to exert the acts of the will themselves; because it is more evidently false, with respect to these, that he cannot if he will; for to say so is a downright contradiction: it is to say he cannot will if he does will. And in this case, not only is it true, that it is easy for a man to do the thing if he will, but the very willing is the doing; when once he has willed, the thing is performed; and nothing else ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... depend upon the fruits of action.[20] The Pitris, that support (by rain) the lives of even all disbelievers, observing the ordinances (of the Creator as declared in the Vedas), are, O king, engaged in action.[21] Know them for downright atheists that reject the declaration of the Vedas (which inculcate action). The person that is learned in the Vedas, by following their declarations in all his acts, attains, O Bharata, to the highest region of heaven by the way of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... I was you," said the downright cabman, "I wouldn't break my heart over them. I know I'd like to have a chance of a quiet talk with the young swells; I'd give them something to take home with them, ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... well-laid plans, this interloper into his caravan? Must he call upon Texas Smith to assassinate the fellow? It was a disagreeably brutal solution of the difficulty, and moreover it might lead to loud suspicion and scandal, and finally it might be downright dangerous. There was such a thing as trial for murder and for conspiracy to effect murder. As to causing a United States officer to vanish quietly, as might perhaps be done with an ordinary American emigrant, that was too ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... which may easily be exceeded; whereas our enjoyments can possibly be but in a determinate measure and degree. Therefore such excess of the affection, since it cannot procure any enjoyment, must in all cases be useless; but is generally attended with inconveniences, and often is downright pain and misery. This holds as much with regard to self-love as to all other affections. The natural degree of it, so far as it sets us on work to gain and make use of the materials of satisfaction, may be to our ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... to bear. But it remained a cruel burden. That gentle, dreamy soul up yonder could not know how it hurt. How could she understand, for instance, what it meant to go back and face the deadly dull routine of a life from which all zest, all interest, had fled? A routine broken only by moments of downright torture. Yes, and the effort it would take to smile! God! If there were only some way to break his fetters, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... the duke's steward, was very eager to know how the affair had turned out; so that the two whom I suspected of being the cause of my metal's concreting in the manner above related told me that I was not a man, but rather a downright devil, for I had compassed that which was not in the power of art to effect; with many other surprizing things which would have been too much even for the infernal powers. As they greatly exaggerated what had passed, perhaps, with a view of excusing themselves, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... under him, received a musket shot through the right arm and lungs, of which he died in a few hours, having been carried off the field by the bravery of lieutenant-colonel Gage, another of his officers. When he dropped, the confusion of the few that remained turned it into a downright and very disorderly flight across a river which they had just passed, though no enemy appeared, or attempted to attack them. All the artillery, ammunition, and baggage of the army were left to the enemy, and, among the rest, the general's cabinet, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... was, as Dulcie expressed it, "rather a dear, quaint thing." But she was more than that, I thought. She had such a pungent wit, her sayings were at times so downright—not to say acrid—that many stood in terror of her and positively dreaded her quick tongue. I rather liked Aunt Hannah myself, perhaps because, by the greatest of good luck, I happened not to have done anything so far to incur her displeasure, which she ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... brought Colonel Thom to see me to aid in his negotiations, but I would not give in, so McKibben in the kindness of his heart rode several miles in order to procure the beef himself, and thus save me from the dire results which he thought would follow should Halleck get wind of such downright insubordination. The next day I was made Commissary of Subsistence for the headquarters in addition to my other duties, and as this brought me into the line of fresh beef, General Halleck had no cause thereafter to complain of a scarcity of ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... were reassuring, although I still felt there was something behind her light manner which intimately concerned me. But I had learned to count on her downright honesty, and her words, "Nothing that cannot be helped, my dear," steadied me, gave me hope that no matter what trouble she had to tell me, she had ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... "Monarch," completing the line of nine British ships. Captain Riou with his light division engaged the Trekroner, and the Danish blockship next south of it, which was by him terribly battered. From this moment, and for some time, to use subsequent words of Nelson, "Here was no manoeuvring: it was downright fighting." ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... woman, and gives a capital account of the battle between OUR and YOUR weeds. Does it not hurt your Yankee pride that we thrash you so confoundedly? I am sure Mrs. Gray will stick up for your own weeds. Ask her whether they are not more honest, downright good sort of weeds. The book gives an extremely pretty picture of one of your villages; but I see your autumn, though so much more gorgeous than ours, comes on sooner, and ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... care all, or nearly all the ordinary cooking-utensils. These the usurpers scorned. Three or four gasoline cans, transformed by a jack-knife into skillets, ovens, platters, etc., sufficed for these masters of their craft. The downright Greek simplicity of their methods won ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... followed the others out to greet the guests. She stayed by the kettle and stirred the stew, and scowled. "I think it's downright mean for folks to come in this way, just dinner-time," said she to the uncles, who had not left their chairs. And they gave short grunts which expressed their assent, for neither of ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... cheerfully. "But why should they worry you, old chap? Everything is securely packed in air-tight, zinc-lined cases, so that there was really no very serious cause for anxiety or fear, even of an explosion. Such a thing could not possibly happen except by the downright deliberate act of some evil—disposed individual; and ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... a decent-sized brig enough, and handy to manage when she had plenty of sea-room, and a wind right aft; but on a bowline, or when the wind was on the quarter, and there was a bit of a sea on, she kept such a stiff weather-helm, and was such a downright cranky vessel, never bending down to a breeze or lifting to the swell, that it was no wonder that as soon as the hands got used to her ways, and tumbled to her contrary points—and she was that contrary ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... was interested.' She described her life in the Arab camps, and explained that her influence over the tribes was partly due to her long sight, a quality held in high esteem in the desert, and partly to a brusque, downright manner, which is always effective with Orientals. She professed to have fasted physically and mentally for years, living only on milk, and reading neither books nor newspapers. Her unholy claim to supremacy in the spiritual kingdom was based, in Kinglake's opinion, on her fierce, ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... done to you? Is it not downright ungrateful to be afraid of him so soon after the service he has ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... So's Gray, and more of 'em too; but there's a difference between them and the downright murdhering Tory set. Poor Tom doesn't throuble the Church much; but you'll be all for Protesthants now, Martin, when you've your new brother-in-law. Barry used to be one of your ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... must happen. The first is love, downright love, on the part of this young girl, for the poor little misshapen man. You may laugh, if you like. But women are apt to love the men who they think have the largest capacity of loving;—and who can love ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... more accurate rendering of the Revised Version, 'received Him with blows.' Mark's account, then, is this: that, as soon as the unanimous howl of condemnation had beep uttered, some of the 'judges'(!) fell upon Jesus with spitting and clumsy ridicule and downright violence, and that afterwards He was handed over to the underlings, who were not slow to copy the example set them at the upper end of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... was in John Jones's letter. There was also a downright directness which hit the mark, and I wrote that I would go to Maizeville in the ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... aware that in giving you this story just as I was told it I shall incur the charge of downright ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... yit I love th' unhighschooled way 25 Ol' farmers hed when I wuz younger; Their talk wuz meatier, an' 'ould stay, While book-froth seems to whet your hunger; For puttin' in a downright lick 'Twixt Humbug's eyes, ther' 's few can metch it. 30 An' then it helves my thoughts ez slick Ez stret-grained hickory ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... down, never!" she cried. "But when a mean thing is hiding what every one has a right to know, I like to tear the truth out of her ... like your case of Tom Jones. Sister Claire is downright mean. Maybe she can't help it. But I know the nuns, and they're God's own children. She knows it too, but, just for the sake of money, she's lying night and day against them, and against her own conscience. There's a devil in her. I could do ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... lookout for cheaper quarters. In spite of his outcries and sulky resistance Trina had induced her husband to consent to such a move, bewildering him with a torrent of phrases and marvellous columns of figures by which she proved conclusively that they were in a condition but one remove from downright destitution. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... as that, father," replied the young woman, smiling but serious; "but I am in downright earnest. The making, the unmaking and the enforcing of law are politics, and every American woman should have an interest in these things. Every thinking woman must have an interest in them. I must know more ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... him; and few things are more strange than the change wrought in his whole bearing and look by that week of energy in climbing his brother's throne. The great article in Nicholas's creed was a complete, downright faith in despotism, and in himself as despotism's apostle. Hence he hated, above all things, a limited monarchy. He told De Custine that a pure monarchy or pure republic he could understand; but that anything between these he ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... madmen! We are not told how the evil was treated and checked. The remedy prescribed by most, the falling upon these jumpers with kicks and cuffings, was entirely fitted to increase the frenzy and turn it into downright epilepsy.[46] Doubtless there was some other remedy, of which people were loth to speak. At the time when witchcraft took its first great flight, the widespread use of the Solaneae, above all, of belladonna, vulgarized the medicine which really checked those ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... like that you are downright silly!" broke in Felix. I could tell by his voice he was trying hard to control his temper. "'Tisn't the going out that anybody objects to; it's the person you're going with. You know very well, Phil, that he isn't the sort of fellow ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... part, don't believe a word of it!" said Miss Cassandra emphatically. "No ordinary girl, no matter how handsome she might be, would sit up and talk like that to a great King. I call it downright impertinent; she wasn't even a titled lady, much less ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... shows a hearty, wholesome, human spirit, sometimes overflowing into downright fun, and a straightforward directness always. It is a pleasant book, sure to ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... who could hedge and trim and lie and be all things to all men. He was totally lacking in the patience that can flatter a fool. He was too sincere, too downright in ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... of skill at manual and mental tricks of a trivial character—which must inevitably appear to a barber or a dentist as stupidity, and to a successful haberdasher as downright imbecility—is a character that men of the first class share with women of the first, second and even third classes. There is at the bottom of it, in truth, something unmistakably feminine; its appearance in a man is almost invariably accompanied by the other touch of femaleness ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... often a downright unscrupulous one. If it's only politics, I'll have a chat with him myself. You pump the newspapers. You leave it to me to swing the boys into line ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... very marked trait, which might promise well for the future, or otherwise, according to circumstances, and that was a certain wilful persistence, which often degenerated into downright obstinacy. Frequently, when his mother thought that she had coaxed or wheedled him into giving up something of which she did not approve, he would quietly approach his object in some other way, and gain his point, ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... they say in Parliament, where no one could be expected to give a downright and straightforward "yes" or "no," is in the affirmative. The scenes of these early dramas are characteristically Mesopotamian. The well-ordered garden "planted" with the tree of life "in the midst," ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... But even if I stay at court, Osgod, you will often be able to be away, and can spend some hours a day at the smithy, where, if you like, you can take off your smock and belabour iron to your heart's content. I should say you would be a rare help to your father, for, as Leof says, for a downright solid blow there are not many ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... the exhibition of bad manners, nor to the mere passive indulgence of an undutiful spirit. These led gradually to a more serious phase of the rebellion, the inauguration of a series of petty annoyances, to be followed, naturally, by acts of downright injustice and cruelty. It seemed as if the old years of oppression to which, in a ruder age, the children had been subjected, were about to be repeated, with the parents for the victims. You must not suppose that these vast changes came about in ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... the pretty infuses; I disdain those little quibbles and verbal allusions that have since sprung up. Those worthy people stood in need of no subtlety to disguise their meaning; their language is downright, and full of natural and continued vigour; they are all epigram; not only the tail, but the head, body, and feet. There is nothing forced, nothing languishing, but everything ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... several days in hopes of a chaperon to take care of herself and daughter—a lovely girl, only nineteen, you wretch—to London, en route to the continent: the mamma a delightful woman, and a widow, with a very satisfactory jointure—you understand—but the daughter, a regular downright beauty, and a ward in chancery, with how many thousand pounds I am afraid to trust myself to say. You must know then they are the Binghams of—, upon my soul, I forget where; ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... Professor Gray knows about them. Billy and Gus are in our class at school." This from the girl who had joyfully greeted the Professor and the boys, yodeling a school yell from the hillside. Then she shot an aside at the slim youth: "You're a regular, downright simpleton, Thad, and forever looking for trouble. ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... comparing notes with Moore, I was confirmed in one or two points which I had always laid down in considering poor Byron. One was, that like Rousseau he was apt to be very suspicious, and a plain downright steadiness of manner was the true mode to maintain his good opinion. Will Rose told me that once, while sitting with Byron, he fixed insensibly his eyes on his feet, one of which, it must be remembered, was deformed. Looking up suddenly, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... can think of things to say that will be the truth and yet not give the whole thing away!" sighed the downright Cynthia. "I wish I were as quick ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... ashamed," he went on, with an uneasy movement of his hands. "It's too bad to expect so much of you. You have more pride than most people, yet I behave to you as if you didn't know the meaning of the word. Do, I beg, believe me when I say that I am downright ashamed, and that I hardly know how to ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... she held out her hand—"I am afraid this is a most unceremonious hour for a call, and if I have interrupted you in your work, pray go on. I wouldn't for the world. What a day, hasn't it been? I always think that these sort of grey depressing days are so much worse than the downright pouring ones, don't you? You are always expecting, you know, and ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... puzzled and troubled me in Jenny. It marred the pleasure of the visit most miserably. I was continually fearing the displeasure of my father and the discomfort of my mother. The whole household were disturbed by what seemed to them downright rudeness. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... the hostile dogmatic tone adopted in both countries by those who only know their own. The ceremonies that are foreign to you impress you, while those you have been used to all your life have become a second nature. An Englishwoman feels downright uncomfortable in her high stuff gown at night, and a German lady brought up at one of the great German Courts told me that when she stayed in an English country house and put on what she called a ball dress for dinner every night, she felt like ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... There must be a downright physical reason for this effect—it is so remarkable and so universal. It seems that the sun's rays so completely alter and modify the constitution of the atmosphere, that it produces, as we inhale it, a wonderfully different effect upon the ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... Charles Lamb, or at any determination, also like Lamb, to write for antiquity, there is in his anthems and odes very considerable evidence that he was ready to write what his paymaster wanted written. We must bear in mind that downright bad taste, such as our present-day taste for such artistic infamies as the "Girls of This" and the "Belles of That," had not come into existence in Purcell's time. Purcell's contemporaries preferred his music to all other for the same reason that we prefer it to all other ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... where the boy stood gazing at his fallen game. He fired, almost at random, at the nearest of the flying buffalo; but the buckshot whistled hurtlessly among the herd, and Sandy thought to himself that it was downright cruelty to shoot among them, for the scattering shot would only wound without ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... Number Two. It was Giovanni now, and not his brother, the unhappy woman was sure of that, and every instinct in her nature bade her go to him at once. But the unconscious volition of those long trained to duty is stronger than almost any impulse except that of downright fear, and Sister Giovanna stayed where she was, for there was still much to ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... know, Trot,' my aunt pursued, after a pause, 'though of a very pliant disposition, has an earnestness of affection in him that reminds me of poor Baby. Earnestness is what that Somebody must look for, to sustain him and improve him, Trot. Deep, downright, faithful earnestness.' ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... Let me see; what's here? as I live, [Takes it. Nothing but downright bawdry: Sirrah, rascal, Is this an age for ribaldry in verse; When every gentleman in town speaks it With so much better grace, than thou canst write it? I'll beat thee with a stave of thy ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... box we set down an' she told me the hide an' hair of the whole thing. She says at first she got letters from everybody under the sun askin' her her opinions an' views, some about things as she never heard of before an' others as to things as she considers a downright insult to consider as she might know about. But she says views an' insults don't really matter much, after you reach her age, so she let those all go into the box together an' thought she'd think no more about it. She says ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner
... style, than he smiled very oddly, and shook his head. These motions he repeated at every following leaf, so that the student Anselmus felt the blood mounting to his face; and at last, when the smile became quite sarcastic and contemptuous, he broke out in downright vexation: "The Herr Archivarius does not seem contented ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... tingled, and he drew closer. Beasley always had a knack of so blending truth with his personal venom that it stung far more than downright insult. He wondered what the Padre's generosity had been, and wherein lay its connection with their present purpose. The explanation was not long in coming, for Montana Ike took up the challenge amidst a storm of ominous murmurs ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... void, empty, unfilled; expressionless, vacant: confounded, nonplused, astounded; unmitigated, absolute, downright. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... marry a second wife without repudiating the first. And when the Landgrave Philip asked for leave to do the same thing, Luther gave it on condition that it was denied. He insisted on what he called a downright lie. The great fact which we have to recognise is that with all the intensity of his passion for authority he did more than any single man to make modern History the ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... gentleness. They might be more safely held up as a pattern. There is an openness, a quickness, almost a bluntness in Mr. Weston, which every body likes in him, because there is so much good-humour with it—but that would not do to be copied. Neither would Mr. Knightley's downright, decided, commanding sort of manner, though it suits him very well; his figure, and look, and situation in life seem to allow it; but if any young man were to set about copying him, he would not be sufferable. On the contrary, I think a young man might be very ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... speech or silence, when he would have wished, as he knew perfectly how, to be considerate, gentle, sympathetic, responsive. On the other hand, his shyness and reticence were seemingly contradicted by a downright bluntness, a deliberate frankness in matters of opinion in which his convictions were involved; for his views were most positively held and his convictions were often passionate in intensity, and he declared them, upon occasion, with an utter absence of diplomacy, compromise, ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... harm will come of it," the other said. "I like you, and I never saw any one hit so quickly and so hard. It's a downright pity you are a preacher. My name's John Morrison, and my farm is ten miles from Nashville, on the Cumberland River. If you should be going in that direction I should be right glad if you would drop ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... Rosny was taken to him, about midnight, at the top of the castle; the king sent him off that very night; he consented to everything that the King of Navarre proposed; promised him a town on the Loire, and said he was ready to make with him not a downright peace just at first, but "a good long truce, which, in their two hearts, would at once be an eternal peace and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... or L4 paid per annum by those gentlemen who are out of town for written news, which is so far generally from having any probability of matter of fact, that it is frequently stuffed up with a 'we hear,' or 'an eminent Jew merchant has received a letter,' being nothing more than downright fiction.' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... was as well dressed as anybody, she concluded, except perhaps the ladies in the closed carriages whose dress could only be guessed at. As for good looks, there did not seem to be much of them in Paris. She called the Frenchwomen downright plain. They knew how to put on their clothes; there was style about them, she did not deny that; but she was prepared to maintain that there was hardly a ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... imagined him a young dandy. She saw a man about thirty-five with dark brown hair, eyes set rather deeply in his head, a little too close together, a delicate, thin, very slightly aquiline nose, and a mouth with curved lips, which were, however, compressed as if with determination or downright resolution. There was not a trace of dandyism in him, and he reminded her immediately of a portrait she had seen of Edward Irving in a shop ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... mean sincerely, by not answering me with a compliment. it is very weak to be pleased with flattery; the stupidest of 'all delusions to beg it. From You I should take it ill. We have known one another almost fifty years—to very little purpose, indeed, if any ceremony is necessary, or downright sincerity not established between us. tell me that you are recovered, and that I shall see you some time or other. I have finished the catalogue of my collection; but you shall never have it without fetching, nor, though a ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... then I persuaded wife, who had been trembling in the kitchen all the while, that we had better go out quiet again, as there was nobody in the house but us: I had tried that woman's door—and we might perhaps be taken for the murderers. And so we did; and that's the downright, honest truth, my lord. I'm rightly served; but God bless you, doant hurt the woman—my wife, my lord, these thirty years. Five-and-twenty years ago come May, which I shall never see, we buried our two children. Had they lived, ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... secure land reform and other measures for all classes of wealth producers, and we need all the help they give us. But if they are threatened with a class war, then they will surely sulk and harden into downright Toryism. What gain will that be for ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... enough to justify the town For three days past; wit that might warrant be For the whole city to talk foolishly Till that were cancell'd; and when that was gone, We left an air behind us, which alone Was able to make the two next companies Eight witty; though but downright fools were wise. When I remember this, * * * I needs must cry I see my days of ballading grow nigh; I can already riddle, and can sing Catches, sell bargains, and I fear shall bring Myself to speak the hardest words I find Over as oft as any with one wind, That takes ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the statement of his trainers, Mr. and Mrs. McArdle, that Peter's proficiency is not so much the result of training as of downright self-education." ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... the pumps, and hearing them stirring about, I came on deck and employed the idlers in getting the spars alongside, as the sea was as calm as a pond. Then, I set them to work unreeving the gear and making things snug for setting up our jury-masts, of which this is the first—a downright seamanlike piece of work I ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... was conquered by Sir Bevis of Southampton. See notes of the commentators on 2 Henry VI., ii. 3: "Therefore, Peter, have at thee with a downright blow, as Bevis of Southampton ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... even occurred to us, until to-night, that he might be one of the burglars who have been looting this post. Besides, sir, though Tip had always been known as a rather worthless fellow, we had never heard of his being the associate of downright criminals." ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... overbearing language which had been used by some gentlemen towards others, who differed in opinion from them on a subject of so much difficulty as the present. He protested against a debate, in which he could trace nothing like reason; but, on the contrary, downright phrensy, raised perhaps by the most extraordinary eloquence. The abolition, as proposed, was impracticable. He denied the right of the legislature to pass a law for it. He warned the Chancellor of the Exchequer to beware of the day, on which the bill should pass, as the ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... her pipe, the old woman continued to gaze with almost motherly affection at the figure in the corner. To say the truth, whether it were chance, or skill, or downright witchcraft, there was something wonderfully human in this ridiculous shape, bedizened with its tattered finery; and as for the countenance, it appeared to shrivel its yellow surface into a grin—a funny kind of expression, betwixt scorn ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... of the Mongal nobility, and even teach them the articles of the Christian faith, yet by their evil lives they drive them from Christianity, as the moral conduct of the Mongals and Tuinians[5], who are downright idolaters, is far more ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... iron bands, and delivered them to sixty knights, who were good in fight, fast to hold over the weald. And he himself drove him forth, and made much din, and Gorlois the fair, forth on the other side, and all their knights ever forth-right slew downright all that they came nigh. Some they crept to the wood on their bare knees, and they were on the morrow most miserable of all folk. Octa was bound, and led to London, and Ebissa, and Ossa—was never to them ...
— Brut • Layamon
... hesitation upon every other subject, but on this he almost always speaks evasively, and though about any thing else he would cut his hand off rather than say the thing that is not, will sometimes tell a downright falsehood. In most cases he has been led to this course by witnessing the agony or suffering the reproach with which the knowledge of his habit is received by his friends. He lies either in mercy to them or because the pangs which their rebuke inflicts would become still ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... early Christian writings in the Church which were not definitely admitted into the New Testament is instructive on this point. The fate of some of these may be described as tragical. Even when they were not branded as downright forgeries, the writings of the Fathers from the fourth century downwards were far preferred ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... Having uttered this downright and unmistakeable opinion, Miss Lavinia raised her head with dignity, and smoothed down her ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... job, and so I took it, and I flatter myself that I made a pretty good job of it. The Germans have an inhuman way of cutting up their verbs. Now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this world when it's all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up. But that's just what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it away over yonder like another ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... man decides for what purpose he is studying this subject, and not the others. But to study every thing, as the men of scientific science in our day preach, without any idea of what is to come out of such study, is downright impossible, because the number of subjects of study is endless; and hence, no matter how many branches we may acquire, their acquisition can possess no significance or reason. And, therefore, in ancient times, down to even ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... my soul! Just listen. I never was a downright, unvarnished heathen, but twice in my life; and I guess you know about both of those times, and my first request is that you let them slide from your memory. The Lord knows I'd like to! Yes, child, I want you to call me uncle, ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... Dysart, in his downright way. "It means only a strong effort after all. If you feel honestly," with an earnest glance at her, "like that toward him, you must be mad to give him even ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... has dressed them in four or five stanzas," says Ramsay, with the apology which is a veiled assertion of higher aims, "yet undoubtedly these must relish best with people who have not bestowed much of their time in acquiring a taste for that downright perfect music which requires none or very little of the poet's assistance." And he tells us in the same preface of a letter he has had from America informing him that there too his manual of song has ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... arrangement; as, if a young male acquaintance of any damsel took a seat beside her, it would be certain to attract the papa or chaperon, to the spot, to see what was going on, as their most likely subject of conversation would have a strong leaning towards a flirtation, or downright love-making, at which nearly all the Spaniards are great adepts; the flowery expressions of their language being peculiarly ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... punishment. The reward is his satisfaction in being a producer, a help to the world, and the glory that comes from widespread recognition and publicity of his accomplishment. The punishment is the slurs, the enmity, the envy and the detraction, to say nothing of the downright lies which are told ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... Ithuel—"this is acting up to the contract, dollars and cents! Captain Rule, they shoot better in sport than when they're in downright airnest." ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... 'cos he swore so steady he hadn't. For a ready lie, and for acting a lie, and over-acting it at times, give me townspeople; but for a thundering big un, against all reason, and for sticking to it stupid when they're downright convicted, and with a face as innercent as a baby's, give me a country lump. And next, because I can tell with folks a deal sharper than him, even to which side of 'em the pocket is they've got what they wants to hide in, by the way they moves their ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... will quarrel with us for what we have said of early prodigies of wit. People, who merely talk to children for the amusement of the moment, may admire their "lively nonsense," and will probably think the simplicity of mind that we prefer, is downright stupidity. The habit of reasoning is seldom learned by children who are much taken notice of for their sprightly repartees; but we have observed that children, after they have learned to reason, as they grow up and become acquainted with the manners and customs of the world, are by no ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... be it said, that for all his superstitious misgivings about the brigantine; his imputing to her something equivalent to a purely phantom-like nature, honest Jarl was nevertheless exceedingly downright and practical in all hints and proceedings concerning her. Wherein, he resembled my Right Reverend friend, Bishop Berkeley— truly, one of your lords spiritual—who, metaphysically speaking, holding all objects to ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the Ramblin' Kid interposed; "you don't need to have no white shirt—of course it would be better but it ain't downright necessary—women don't fall in love with shirts, it's what's inside ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... members of our race have a reputation for carelessness, looseness in regard to the ownership of property, you can help to solve the race problem, and make life here in the South more comfortable for every other member of the race if you will win for yourself a reputation for downright honesty and integrity in all your dealings with your neighbors, whether ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... for nothing because it was pretty or tasteful, but chose every thing by its costliness and magnificence. Of course the milliner assured her that every thing she took a fancy to from its rarity, was becoming; and then, oh dear! how the Fairies were amused! for poor Julia looked downright ugly in some of the things she selected, and still went away as self satisfied as ever, on the old grounds that the costume was so expensive that none of her acquaintance could get one like it. This was still her chief comfort! Euphrosyne actually shook her fist at her as she was ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... at the top of the castle; the king sent him off that very night; he consented to everything that the King of Navarre proposed; promised him a town on the Loire, and said he was ready to make with him not a downright peace just at first, but "a good long truce, which, in their two hearts, would at once be an eternal peace and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... surprising that the landlords see the question through a differently tinted medium. They entertain an idea that the land is their property, and, like any other commodity, should be let or sold to a person who can pay for it. Strict and downright "landlordism," as it is called, as if it were a disease like "Daltonism," does not see things through a medium charged with the national colour, and Miss Gardiner is a true type of downright landlordism such as would not be complained of in England, but in Ireland ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... an unpleasant shock. Miss Howard's evidence, unimportant as it was, had been given in such a downright straightforward manner that it had never occurred to me to doubt her sincerity. Still, I had a great respect for Poirot's sagacity—except on the occasions when he was what I described to myself as ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... meaning to deal otherwise than fairly by the boy, and neither, unless I greatly mistake, hath his wife." And this he said as if both Colonel Chelmsford and my mother were at his elbow, and for that manner of speaking I have ever had contempt, preferring downright scurrility, and Captain Cavendish replied with his quick agility of wrath, as precipitate toward judgment as a sailor to the ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... of it, and the last thing they desired was a child. Now there are two of them. Their father is away, their mother won't look at them! What will become of me until Eva gets well and behaves like a human being? I never promised to be an aunt to twins; I never did like twins; I think they're downright vulgar!" ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... modern world, the first unfurling of her standard on the rocky pinnacle of Europe, is here celebrated in the style which it deserved. There is no false timsel-decoration about Tell, no sickly refinement, no declamatory sentimentality. All is downright, simple, and agreeable to Nature; yet all is adorned and purified and rendered beautiful, without losing its resemblance. An air of freshness and wholesomeness breathes over it; we are among honest, inoffensive, yet fearless peasants, untainted by the ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... ad infinitum, with ceaseless arguments that proved nothing and convinced nobody, and a continual stream of contradiction that just fell short of downright quarrelling. ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... there may be a certain amount of tosh about the Salvation Army—I belong to the Established Church myself—but still you can't deny that it's religion; and you can't go against religion, can you? At least unless you're downright immoral, ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... except downright insipid, is to be animated and softened by the influence of beauty: but of this untractable sort is a lifeless handsome fellow that visits us, whom I have dressed at this twelvemonth; but he is as insensible of all the arts I use, as if he ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... and hardship, they never seeing any vessel which reduced them not to the necessity of fighting, and often filled them with apprehensions of being overcome. Whatever they took in their several prizes could afford them no other pleasure but downright drunkenness on board, and except for two or three islands there were no other places where they were permitted to come on shore, for nowadays it was become exceedingly dangerous to land, either at Jamaica, Barbadoes, or on the islands of the Bermudas. In this condition they were ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... on the west coast of Africa and know what it is poking about in muddy creeks in boats, tramping through the jungle, knee deep in mud, half the crew down with fever, and the rest worn out with work and heat. I can tell you it is not all fun, as you youngsters seem to think, but downright hard work." ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... begins. The setting up of feeble reason in opposition to the word of God, has been the foundation of all mistakes in religion. And, if we determine to be satisfied of the reasonableness of the truth before we believe it, and carry out the principle, we shall land in downright atheism. By this, I do not mean that any truth is unreasonable. It is not so. Divine truth is the perfection of reason. But there are some truths which may appear unreasonable, because we cannot see the whole of them. ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... James Harwood; "that's what he is. If it wasn't for his rheumatic gout, he's a man that would be ready to fight the champion of England any day in the week. There's very few things the captain wouldn't do in the way of downright pluck; but, you see, whatever pluck a man may have, it can't help him much when he's laid by the heels with the rheumatic gout, as the captain ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... princes took alarm. If they had viewed with composure the failure of Frederick's foolhardy efforts in Bohemia, they beheld with downright dismay the expansion of Bavaria and the destruction of a balance of power long maintained between Catholic and Protestant Germany. And so long as the ill-disciplined remnants of Frederick's armies were behaving like highwaymen, pillaging and burning throughout ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... stolen. In seeking to recover the stolen horse, he unintentionally stole another. In trying to restore the wrong horse to his rightful owner, he was himself arrested. After no end of comic and dolorous adventures, he surmounted all his misfortunes by downright pluck and genuine good feeling. It is a noble contribution to ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... Venetian dogedom, falls in love, after a half-hearted fashion, with the daughter of another house of somewhat less, but still old repute, and of fair, though much lesser wealth. By a good deal of "shepherding" on the part of her family and friends, and (one is bound to say) some rather "downright Dunstable" on her own, he is made to propose; but her family accepts the demand that the thing shall, for a time, be kept secret from his. Of course no such secrecy is long possible; and his people, especially a certain wicked cavaliere-colonel, with the aid of a French Monseigneur and the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... sensible at times. You'd be surprised. I call that downright wisdom, not merely as regards the present case, but with reference to our trip up the river of life, generally. How many people, on that voyage, load up the boat till it is ever in danger of swamping with a store of ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... progressive ideas tempered by conservatism; in John Dickenson, "The Immortal Farmer," erudition and literary ability; in Caesar Rodney and Thomas McKean, working power; in James Duane, timid Whigism, halting, but keeping true to the cause; in Joseph Galloway, downright Toryism, seeking control, and at length going to the enemy. The Southern Colonies presented in Thomas Johnson, the grasp of a statesman; in Samuel Chase, activity and boldness; in the Rutledges, wealth and accomplishment; in Christopher Gadsden, the genuine American; and ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... put them down when it has come to this!" he exclaimed, "The idea of their daring to attack a man of your standing, an old family like this,—of the best blood in the country! I say it's downright insolence, and I'll come over myself and help chastise them for ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... discover the sex, she remarked, that no description could paint up to the life, the mixture of pique, confusion and disappointment, that appeared in his countenance, joined to the mournful exclamation: "By heavens, a woman!" This at once opened her eyes, which had been shut in downright stupidity. However, as if he had meant to retrieve that escape, he still continued to toy with and fondle her, but with so staring an alteration from extreme warmth into a chill and forced civility, that even Emily herself could not but take notice of it, and now began ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... stands, And Milo-like surveys his arms and hands, Then sighing thus, 'And am I now threescore? And why ye gods should two and two make four?' He said, and climbed a stranded lighter's height. Shot to the black abyss, and plunged downright." ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... was Giovanni now, and not his brother, the unhappy woman was sure of that, and every instinct in her nature bade her go to him at once. But the unconscious volition of those long trained to duty is stronger than almost any impulse except that of downright fear, and Sister Giovanna stayed where she was, for there was still ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... want of something better to say. His mind was still confused by this sudden upheaval of his ideals. All that was best in Villon's poetry had stirred his enthusiasm, while all the much which was worst had left his sane wholesomeness untainted. To the half-dreamer, half-downright, practical lad in Poitou, Villon, with his jovial, bitter humour and even flow of human verse, had been something of an idol, and when our idols crash into ruin the thunder of the catastrophe bewilders judgment. But there was more than bewilderment, there was ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... eternal Misery, only because they were born of Adam, the original Transgressor." This is a rational Sentiment, and I wish it were well improved; for it is better to suppose them entering on a new State of Trial, or downright Annihilation to be their Portion: But what Havock does this Concession make with the Doctor's other Doctrines, of Christ's dying for all Men in a good Sense, of considering us in point of Obligation to keep the Law inviolable, the same as Adam was before his Fall; of God's either granting no ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch
... scene. How much less romantic the town looked now than when I saw it floating, as it seemed, upon the sky-blue water in a haze of gold-dust fired by the slanting rays! It was then like the Castillon of some troubadour's song; now it was a mean-looking little sun-baked town modernized to downright plainness, with no remnant of its ramparts remaining save a sombre old Gothic gateway near the river, and no ecclesiastical architecture deserving notice. Its site, however, is the same as that which it ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... He advised Henry VIII that the right way out of his perplexity was to marry a second wife without repudiating the first. And when the Landgrave Philip asked for leave to do the same thing, Luther gave it on condition that it was denied. He insisted on what he called a downright lie. The great fact which we have to recognise is that with all the intensity of his passion for authority he did more than any single man to make modern History ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... half a dozen over to the minister's wife this mornin', and she was so pleased! She said it was sich a blessin' to have fresh eggs again. She was gittin' sick o' them she's been buyin' at Billings'. She was downright thankful." ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... may find much to delight and interest on the banks of the Rhine, always provided that he suits his mood to his environment, and takes but little of Rhine scenery at a time. For surely between Coblentz and Bingen there is an iteration as regards castles and ruins which is downright wearisome. Do we not between these points find Lahneck, Marksburg, Sterrenberg, Liebenstein, The Mouse, Rheinfels, The Cat, Schoenburg, Gutenfels, The Pfalz, Stahleck, Furstenberg, Hohneck, Sooneck, Falkenburg, ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... because she was young, with the incomparable, the unique charm of comely adolescence; it simply excited the imagination to conceive the exquisite treasures of contour and tint and texture which it veiled. Do not infer that Rachel was a coquette. Although comely, she was homely—a "downright" girl, scorning and hating all manner of pretentiousness. She had a fine best dress, and when she put it on everybody knew that it was her best; a stranger would have known. Whereas of a coquette none but her intimate ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... neither might be agreeable seems not to have occurred to him. Did you ever know such assurance? Assurance? My dear, it was gall, downright GALL! Well, I didn't find it wormwood, and replied, with my untutored Redhorse heart in my throat: "I—I shall be pleased to do ANYTHING." Could words have been more stupid? There are depths of fatuity in me, friend o' my ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... then you must be downright jealous of his fiddle, Moggy," replied Nancy; "but never mind, you sha'n't be jealous now about nothing. I'll sing you a song, and then you'll forget all this." Nancy Corbett then ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... was before this disgrace of Will happened, and they didn't downright need the things then—it were all sort of complimentary. When needs are gave it's charity, but what you don't want is just a present. We've got to find a way to do up needs in a present package for 'em. I declare, I feel right put to know what to do." Mother Mayberry's ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... a folly still to twirl, And smirk and promenade and querl About the town? I'll put this down: A man becomes downright blast Before he knows that he is either That, or what I am—call ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... as the others, Maggie; once there is a young man to flirt with, you don't care what he is or where he comes from. When there are no young men, you will snub the old ladies fast enough; and as for Sally, she is downright rude. I didn't want to see the haberdashers, but while they were in my house I was ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... at Cappy Ricks with the closest approach to downright affection he considered quite dignified to permit during ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... of the beautiful lake, which other people thought so lovely, was, in that mind which affected to scoff at the unseen, a distinct creation of downright superstition. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... author is justified in appealing to every upright and honourable mind in the kingdom." If Mr. Bowles limits the perusal of his defence to the "upright and honourable" only, I greatly fear that it will not be extensively circulated. I should rather hope that some of the downright and dishonest will read and be converted, or convicted. But the whole of his reasoning is here superfluous—"an author is justified in appealing," &c. when and why he pleases. Let him make out a tolerable case, and few of his readers will quarrel ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... "It's downright cruelty to spoil our first cool evening with a fire, Phebe, but I'll forgive you, it makes you look so pretty," she said, quite unconscious of her beauty as she stood against the dark background of the curtain in picturesque stateliness, her dress of soft cream-white cloth falling in clinging ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... suitable to them, and it will be quite hopeless to attempt to induce the general body of a purely artistic class to make louder and more fussy professions of virtue and religion than other people. In fact, it is a downright insult to the dramatic profession to exact or to expect any such thing. Equally objectionable, and equally impracticable, are the attempts of Quixotic "dramatic reformers" to exercise a sort of goody-goody censorship over the selection and the text of the plays to be acted. The stage has been ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... Roy did not feel altogether in his right mind. He was downright thankful to be helping Lance with some sports for the men, designed to counteract the infectious state of ferment prevailing in the city, on account of to-morrow's deferred hartal. For the voice of Mahatma Ghandi—saint, fanatic, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... interesting, because he's really crazy. It's a religious conviction with him, and with most of 'em it's a gambling fever or pure vagrancy. But Jasper Flight believes that the Almighty keeps the secret of the silver deposits in these hills, and gives it away to the deserving. He's a downright noble figure. Of course I'll stake him! As long as he can crawl out in the spring. He and that burro are a sight together. The beast is nearly as white as Jasper; ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... her pipe the old woman continued to gaze with almost motherly affection at the figure in the corner. To say the truth, whether it were chance, or skill, or downright witchcraft, there was something wonderfully human in this ridiculous shape, bedizened with its tattered finery; and as for the countenance, it appeared to shrivel its yellow surface into a grin—a funny kind of expression betwixt scorn and merriment, as if it understood ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... man," said Goldberger, "but he's too romantic. He looks for a mystery in every crime, whereas most crimes are merely plain, downright brutalities. Take this case. Here's a man kills himself, and Godfrey wants us to believe that death resulted from a scratch on the hand. Why, there's no poison on earth would kill a man as quick as that—for he must have dropped dead before he could get out of the ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... in the cooking-pot now, so to speak," proceeded Tom blandly, "and we're downright sad about it, we are, for as my missus was saying, you'd make a pretty pair. But, Lord, Master Godfrey, don't you take it too much to heart, for she's an upright young lady, she is, and steadfast. Or if she ain't, there's plenty of others; also one day follows ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... use of his old passion for Madame Arnoux, uttering in his new flame's hearing all those amorous sentiments which the other had caused him to feel in downright earnest, and pretending that it was Madame Dambreuse herself who had occasioned them. She received these avowals like one accustomed to such things, and, without giving him a formal repulse, did not ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... plainly as words, assured Frank that Harris held but an indifferent hand; whereas he held the best the pack afforded. By that falsehood,—for, with looks and actions at your command, it is not necessary to open your mouth in order to tell the most downright, absolute lie,—he had induced Frank to play on boldly to his ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... a way, but it wasn't much of a way. She liked the fine clothes and the trinkets he gave her, but, after he went blind, she could hardly tolerate him. Lots of times, she would have been downright cruel to him if I ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... the 18th century, gamestresses became so numerous that they excited no surprise, especially among the higher classes; and the majority of them were notorious for unfair play or downright cheating. A stranger once betted on the game of a lady at a gaming-table, who claimed a stake although on a losing card. Out of consideration for the distinguished trickstress, the banker wished ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... girl! My heart is fairly dancing in my body. And, besides, a little puss like you is always glad to hear of an admirer, and only a short time ago you praised him loudly enough as a splendid dancer. A downright good fellow, child, just as I was myself at his age. An uncle of his, a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "Yes, downright swearing; employing strong expletives,—actual oaths! Oh, it helps me more than you can believe. But just imagine the result if I were to harangue Mademoiselle Bertha in this style! ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... I exclaimed, "how dare you strike your sister? You deserve a downright good thrashing for such a deed, and—mark you this, boy!—if ever you so much as attempt to do such a thing again and I get to hear of it, I will rope's-end you until you can neither stand, sit, nor lie down. You ought to be ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... I mean more besides. He doesn't stop by being merely 'not good.' He is actively and busily downright bad." ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... of this rival, this obstacle in the way of his well-laid plans, this interloper into his caravan? Must he call upon Texas Smith to assassinate the fellow? It was a disagreeably brutal solution of the difficulty, and moreover it might lead to loud suspicion and scandal, and finally it might be downright dangerous. There was such a thing as trial for murder and for conspiracy to effect murder. As to causing a United States officer to vanish quietly, as might perhaps be done with an ordinary American emigrant, that was too good a thing ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... "Downright sure of it," I declared, in solemn earnest. After a few moments of silence, I asked gently: "Do you ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... little stir in the country by his prophesying) was cast into prison for his obstinacy. After a while Luther visited him, thinking by that time to find him of another mind; but so far was he from acknowledging his error, that he downright railed at Luther for giving him good counsel. And some write, that to his dying day (having lived to the age of eighty years) he ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... satisfactory, the five pounds should be paid. More they would not say; and after a short, sharp struggle with herself Bel accepted the terms; but she could not restrain a farewell shot at the trustees as she turned to go. "I'm as sure o' my five pounds as if ye'd promised it downright, sirs. I shall keep ye a ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... thought that younger men should follow closely or at a distance in his steps to the highest eminences of legal success, Lord Eldon was disgracefully stingy in bestowing honors on rising barristers who belonged to his own party, but his injustice and downright oppression to brilliant advocates in the Whig ranks merit the warmest expressions of disapproval and contempt. The most notorious sufferers from his rancorous intolerance were Henry Brougham and Mr. Denman, who, having worn silk gowns as Queen Caroline's Attorney ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... about the town, in hired tenements, and coming finally to the almshouse as the natural home of their old age. At last, after creeping, as it were, for such a length of time along the utmost verge of the opaque puddle of obscurity, they had taken that downright plunge which, sooner or later, is the destiny of all families, whether princely or plebeian. For thirty years past, neither town-record, nor gravestone, nor the directory, nor the knowledge or memory of man, bore any trace of Matthew Maule's descendants. His blood might possibly exist elsewhere; ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... mother did years ago. That is all she thought about it. I did more thinking while Nora was telling me. I thought that Landis Stoner must be a little mite deceitful or she would not be critical of Nora when others were present and yet slip in to see her during study-hours. It seemed—well—it seemed downright deceitful to me. ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... with a subdued fierceness. "I'll attend to the scoundrel presently, Captain Rawlings, though he doesn't deserve it. He is a downright sweep—like all his ear-ringed kidney. He had no right to kick this man, who is one of the best and smartest men aboard. I gave him a clip on the jaw, and when I've dressed his arm and he is able to turn to again I'll ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... particular place in the school for herself. Once on the right road it had been only a matter of a few days before the girls accepted her, and only a matter of weeks before she was one of the leading members of her class. Her quiet humor and downright frankness made her a welcome addition to the school, as Sally ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... of trees or plants, but speak of ohias, ohelos, kukui (candle- nut), lauhala (pandanus), pulu (tree fern), mamane, koa, etc. There is one native word in such universal use that I already find I cannot get on without it, pilikia. It means anything, from a downright trouble to a slight difficulty or entanglement. "I'm in a pilikia," or "very pilikia," or "pilikia!" A revolution would be "a pilikia." The fact of the late king dying without naming a successor was pre-eminently a pilikia, and it would be a serious ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... his chair. "I've been to the bank, and it's no use my explaining, or begging ever so hard. They won't hear of it. 'We've done it times and times,' they says to me, 'and we won't do it no more. That's flat,' and so indeed it is flat, sir, as you may say downright Dunstable; but that ain't no advantage to ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... the Jewish law if a man were a blasphemer he was to be put to death; and supposing Christ to be merely human if this be not blasphemy I do not know where you will find it. "He that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father." That is downright blasphemy if Christ be not divine. If Moses, or Elijah, or Elisha, or any other mortal had said, "You must honour me as you honor God;" and had put himself on a level with God, it would have ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody
... when analyzed, is found to be composed of a great variety of elements. The downright "Hunker" Conservative, who is very likely to pass over to and identify himself with the first class, hates with a natural, ineradicable hate all political and spiritual advancement. He takes material and selfish, and consequently low and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... prevented; or, if separation is inevitable it can be prepared for in advance, the necessary legal arrangements can be made to protect the family, and the anxiety, suspense, and useless effort avoided which a sudden and downright abandonment ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... easily forgive him for neglecting to inform the Luttrells, at the earliest opportunity, of Brian's reappearance. "We should have saved time, money, anxiety: we might have settled the matter without troubling Miss Murray, or agitating Mrs. Luttrell; and I call it downright dishonesty to have concealed a fact which was of such vital importance," said Mr. Colquhoun, who had lost his temper. And Percival flung himself out of the room ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... heavy as Rotten Row in April,—how in the name of common sense can Jimjams be expected to show up against high-class yearlings like Ballarat and Tifftoff on the Goodwin Sands, T. Y. C.? The whole thing is only another instance of the hare-brained imbecility and downright puddling folly with which the cackling herd will follow any brazen-headed nincompoop who sets up to advise them on turf matters. Jimjams has just as much chance of winning this race as Mr. JEREMY has of being Archbishop of Canterbury. Verb. sap. At ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... Chambers and Anderson. We wonder at the length of face and general atrabilious look that mark the portraits of the men of that generation, but it is no marvel when even their relaxations were such downright hard work. Fathers when their day on earth was up must have folded down the leaf and left the task to be finished by their sons,—a dreary inheritance. Yet both Drayton and Daniel are fine poets, though both of them in their most elaborate works made shipwreck of their genius on the shoal of a ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... and to my office, where we sat, and among other things I had a fray with Sir J. Minnes in defence of my Will in a business where the old coxcomb would have put a foot upon him, which was only in Jack Davis and in him a downright piece of knavery in procuring a double ticket and getting the wrong one paid as well as the second was to the true party. But it appeared clear enough to the board that Will was true in it. Home to dinner, and after dinner by water to the Temple, and there took my Lyra Viall book bound up with ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... did not loiter over my breakfast after this discovery. Something which I saw or suspected amongst the significant hints of a paragraph or advertisement, made me fear that there might possibly be insinuations or downright assertion in the libel requiring instant public notice; and, therefore, on a motive of prudence, had I even otherwise felt that indifference for slander which now I do feel, but which, in those years, morbid irritability of temperament forbade me to affect, I should still ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... wife's for her kind sympathy, which we know is most sincere. Tell her I regret to have called you her teetotal husband, as I am no better myself. Nay, it is you who have the advantage of me with your two glasses of claret, which I call downright intemperance." (He was allowed to drink nothing ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... opposing lines at Helles would have lent themselves well—in short, total lack of organization at home to provide even the most rudimentary and indispensable artillery requisites for daily consumption; not to speak of downright carelessness which resulted in wrong shells being sent to the wrong guns, and new types of fuses being sent without fuse keys and new types of howitzer shells without range tables. These serious faults provoked their own penalties ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... as an all-wise Providence saw fit to dump that sand-bank on one of the Polacks," said he, "I call it a piece of downright Ross Shelby luck that it fell ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... our old mistress; they were presented to her in years gone by, by members of our family on her birthdays and various festivals; her ladyship never wears anything made by people outside; yet to hoard these would be a downright pity! Indeed, she hasn't worn them even once. It was yesterday that she told me to get out two costumes and hand them to you to take along with you, either to give as presents, or to be worn by some one ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... change, except under strong conviction, (a thing now rather rare,) the religion of their early prejudices, especially if the conversion is brought about by any political machine, are very apt to degenerate into indifference, laxity, and often downright atheism. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... b and c are English chimneys. They are distinguishable, we think, at a glance, from all the rest, by a downright serviceableness of appearance, a substantial, unaffected, decent, and chimney-like deportment, in the contemplation of which we experience infinite pleasure and edification, particularly as it seems to us to be strongly ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... which our wits followed at this time that was not of English growth, namely, the tone of gallantry in which they addressed ladies, no matter whether single or married. Their compliments seemed like downright love-making, and that frequently of a coarse kind, but such expressions meant nothing, and were understood to be a mere exercise of skill. Pope used them in writing to Judith Cowper, whom he professes to worship as much as any female saint in heaven; ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... and final victory over any one lust, which ever we have been troubled with. It is true, believers may be kept from some gross out-breaking of a corruption, which sometime prevailed, as Peter was from relapsing into an open and downright denying his Master; yet that same corruption did afterward stir, though not so violently as to carry him to such an height of sin; yet so far as to cause him do that which was a partial denying of his Master, when Paul withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... to add, "I said 'It's dear,' but still, it'll do, eh, you others?" On this downright question ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... be captious indeed to object to this, did it arise from that patriotic feeling so common in the English; but here it is all vanity, downright vanity: a Frenchman must have his country and his mistress admired, though he does not often care much for either one or the other. I have been in various parts of France in the most critical periods of the revolution—I have conversed with people of all parties and of all ranks—and ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... might be agreeable seems not to have occurred to him. Did you ever know such assurance? Assurance? My dear, it was gall, downright gall! Well, I didn't find it wormwood, and replied, with my untutored Redhorse heart in my throat, "I—I shall be pleased to do anything." Could words have been more stupid? There are depths of fatuity in me, friend o' my soul, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... neglected his work as a parish priest," (Miss Galindo was making horrible faces, to keep back tears, squeezing up her eyes in a way which would have amused me at any other time, but when she was speaking of Mr. Gray); "when I see a downright good, religious man, I'm apt to think he's got hold of the right clue, and that I can do no better than hold on by the tails of his coat and shut my eyes, if we've got to go over doubtful places on our road to Heaven. So, my lady, you must excuse me if, when he gets ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Castallack Round by the same antiquarian, we quote the following passages, showing the constant mischief that is going on, whether due to downright Vandalism or to ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... before who claimed God as a pal. You've got a wife a d——d sight truer to you for what you call her 'sin,' than you've ever been to her, with all your d——d salvation! And as you couldn't make her otherwise, though you've tried to hard enough, it seems to me that for square downright chuckle-headedness, you can take the cake! Good-night! Now, run away and play! You're making ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... fortune-teller among them, too," he continued. "Say, she's a shrewd one. Of course, she's one of the fakers, but she's downright smart—told me a lot of things about myself that were true. Suppose she looked me over sharp. Say, I tell you what I'll do; I'll get her to tell your fortunes. How'd you like to have your fortunes ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... the writer as being "throughout in downright almost pathetic earnestness." While The National Reformer seems to be in doubt whether the book is a covert attack upon Christianity or a serious defence of it, but declares that both orthodox and unorthodox will find matter requiring ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... of the battle between OUR and YOUR weeds. Does it not hurt your Yankee pride that we thrash you so confoundedly? I am sure Mrs. Gray will stick up for your own weeds. Ask her whether they are not more honest, downright good sort of weeds. The book gives an extremely pretty picture of one of your villages; but I see your autumn, though so much more gorgeous than ours, comes on sooner, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... want to seem severe, but I cannot bear a noise. I am so worn out when I come from the office. It seems each day my head aches worse than it did the day before." Miss Dorcas sighed. "And if it isn't a downright ache when I come home, it begins to pound as soon as I look at this book—" she eyed the account-book open before her—"I hoped you could have some new shoes this month. Those are downright shabby. But there isn't any money for them. I don't see how I am going ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... David had a manly, downright belief. His belief was that if sin is allowed to get to the top in this world of ours, it is our fault. David felt that it was partly his—and being a king—very much his, and as he was trying to do something about it, he naturally wanted the ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... streamed to his girdle, and the soil of the ford was crimson with the blood that fell from the body of that warrior so valiant in fight. And Cuchulain's endurance was at an end, for Ferdia continually struck at him, not attempting to guard, and his downright blows, and quick thrusts, and crushing strokes fell constantly upon him, till Cuchulain demanded of Laeg the son of Riangabra to deliver to him the Gae-Bulg. Now the manner of using the Gae-Bulg was this: it was set with its end pointing down a stream, and was cast ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... sale, he no more thought of saying his prayers than would a man who had taken God Almighty by the horn, patted Him on the rump, and sold Him, and let some strange boy urge Him on with a bit of strap. He felt that he was an evil man, a downright ungodly man, and he asked his wife what the devil she ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... charging you with downright Duplicity I wronged you, nor do I hesitate to atone for an Injury which I feel I have committed, or add to my Fault by the Vindication of an expression dictated by Resentment, an expression which deserves Censure, and demands the apology I now offer; for I think that Disposition ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... excess of joy, a surprise of joy, has a thousand extravagances in it. There were some in tears; some raging and tearing themselves, as if they had been in the greatest agonies of sorrow; some stark raving and downright lunatic; some ran about the ship stamping with their feet, others wringing their hands; some were dancing, some singing, some laughing, more crying, many quite dumb, not able to speak a word; others sick and vomiting; several swooning and ready to faint; and a few were ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... You are always reminding me; and if you go on presuming upon long service, and making honesty so very troublesome—give me a civil downright rascal! And so follow, and assist in preparing for the glorious union of the Rolands and the Ravensburgs—of two ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... of AEschylus, and suppose that a translator should offer us an English 'Prometheus,' which he acknowledged to be very free, but at the same time contended that his variations from the Greek were so many downright improvements, so that, if he had not given us the genuine 'Prometheus,' he had given us something better. In such a case we should all reply, but we do not want something better. Our object is not the best possible ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... heart's love. (He sighs happily, and takes her hands in his, looking quaintly at her.) That must positively be my last kiss, Grace, or I shall become downright silly. Let us talk. (Releases her and sits a little apart from her.) Grace: is this your first ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... alternate sunshine and showers; but the subtle blending of shadows and lights, of murmurs and movements, in April, gives us not mere shocks of sensation, but unity of joy as does music. Therefore when a poet sees the vision of a girl in April, even a downright materialist is in sympathy with him. But we know that the same individual would be menacingly angry if the law of heredity or a geometrical problem were described as a girl or a rose—or even as a cat or a camel. For ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... come about that Mr. Fyshe was seated at lunch, consuming a cutlet and a pint of Moselle in the plain downright fashion of a man so democratic that he is practically a revolutionary socialist, and doesn't mind saying so; and the young rector of St. Asaph's was sitting opposite to him in a religious ecstasy over a ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... pies that start the water circulatin' in the mouth; There are pies that wear the flavor of the warm an' sunny south; Some with oriental spices spur the drowsy appetite An' just fill a fellow's being with a thrill o' real delight; But for downright solid goodness that comes drippin' from the sky There is nothing quite the equal of ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... no difference in Arnaud's clothing, no effort to make himself presentable for New York or her. In a way, it amused her—it was so characteristic of his forgetfulness, and it made him seem doubly familiar. He waved a hand toward the luxury of the interior. "This," he declared, "is downright impressive, and lifted, I'm sure, out of ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... saying," Kelson went on complacently, "I could have kissed her and I felt downright mean for ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... you live dissatisfied with yourself, or unprofitable to others." De Tranquilitate, ch. 3. Cicero has positively told us that "study is the food of youth, and the amusement of old age." Orat. pro Archia. The younger Pliny was a downright Bibliomaniac. "I am quite transported and comforted," says he, "in the midst of my books: they give a zest to the happiest, and assuage the anguish of the bitterest, moments of existence! Therefore, whether distracted by the cares or the losses of my family, or my friends, I ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... project, cautioning them under no circumstances, to remain away from the train more than two or three hours. This they faithfully promised not to do, and departed; notwithstanding Jerry pronounced it as downright foolish a ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... and your professor; but one thing I do know about it, and that is that it is not pleasant to the ear; falsehood is far more esteemed; it is prettier, and therefore pleasanter; while Truth, conscious of its purity, blurts out downright remarks, and offends people. Here is a case of it: even you are offended with me for having discovered (with your assistance) how this matter really stands, and shown that our common object is hard of attainment. ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... reverse, and also that he was apt to be decided and even imperious if thwarted or interfered with. He must always have been fearless,—in the play he appears insensible to fear of any ordinary kind. And, finally, he must have been quick and impetuous in action; for it is downright impossible that the man we see rushing after the Ghost, killing Polonius, dealing with the King's commission on the ship, boarding the pirate, leaping into the grave, executing his final vengeance, could ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... to be much interested in the outlaw. Miss Terry," he observed, as if by chance the thought had just occurred to him, when, in reality, he was downright jealous. ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... Sam Holt fancied it the case. He heard many allusions to former times and incidents, not knowing that as children they had been playmates. The gallant captain's present admiration was pretty plain; and the young lady was amused by it after the manner of her sex. Being very downright himself, Mr. Holt had no idea how much admiration is required to fill the measure of a proposal of marriage in a red-coat's resolve, or how much harmless coquetry lies dormant in the ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... the beginning of the fourth chapter, Condy had finally come to know the enormous difficulties, the exasperating complications, the discouragements that begin anew with every paragraph, the obstacles that refuse to be surmounted, and all the pain, the labor, the downright mental travail and anguish that fall to the lot of ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... cry I, scornfully, standing scarlet and deeply ashamed, facing them all; "it is real, plain, downright, simple truth." ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... tone adopted in both countries by those who only know their own. The ceremonies that are foreign to you impress you, while those you have been used to all your life have become a second nature. An Englishwoman feels downright uncomfortable in her high stuff gown at night, and a German lady brought up at one of the great German Courts told me that when she stayed in an English country house and put on what she called a ball dress for dinner every night, ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... chapel, (the site of which he did not forget that he owed to Larry) he attended one of Larry's meetings, and shook his bovine head at his flock, and bellowed ferocious commendation of the young man, who, he thundered, had not failed in his duty by the Church and the people. There was a downright, fighting quality in Father Sweeny that was large and stimulating. Larry felt that he had, at least, his own parish firmly at his back, and wished that he had a few more such as Father Tim to stand ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... the hope of Gruenewald," cried Fritz. "He doesn't suit some of your high-and-dry, old, ancient ideas; but he's a downright modern man—a man of the new lights and the progress of the age. He does some things wrong; so they all do; but he has the people's interests next his heart; and you mark me—you, sir, who are a Liberal, and the enemy of all their governments, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... qualities of such a man as Burke. The painful fact which we are unable to conceal from ourselves is, that the common opinion of better men than the Prince of Wales leaned in the same direction. His violence in the course of the Regency debates had produced strong disapproval in the public, and downright consternation in his own party. On one occasion he is described by a respectable observer as having "been wilder than ever, and laid himself and his party more open than ever speaker did. He is folly personified, but shaking his cap and bells under the laurel of genius. He finished ...
— Burke • John Morley
... changes on every second page. This fact constitutes one of the counts in the orthodox indictment of him: it is cited as proof that his capacity for consecutive thought was limited, and that he was thus deficient mentally, and perhaps a downright moron. The argument, it must be obvious, is fundamentally nonsensical. What deceives the professors is the traditional prolixity of philosophers. Because the average philosophical writer, when he essays to expose his ideas, makes ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... why I'm working for you. He broke me flat. It was downright robbery. I bought the wreck of the Cascade, down in Sydney, out of a first instalment of ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... the sort. It is the basis on which society rests, the conventional agreement. If society is about to be overturned, it is on this point. Women are beginning to tell men what they really think of them; and to insist that the same relations of downright sincerity and independence that exist between men shall exist between women and men. Absolute truth between souls, without regard to sex, has always been the ideal life ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... you doing what you ought, I tell you, Katie; it's downright dishonest of me to keep this," he continued, with burning cheeks, "living as I am upon charity, and aunt so poor. I see it plainly now. Mr. Wallis offered to buy it of me last summer, and if he likes ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... feared it. Pray, sir, come on quickly. The Queen is weaker, and my lady much troubled for her. By God, we have left it late. And the ministers must still be wrangling, and my Lord Bolingbroke like a man mazed. We must be swift and downright with ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... must be something in this downright wisdom of childishness since Christ went (as we must believe) out of His way to lay such stress on it; and since our own hearts respond so readily when Vaughan or Wordsworth claim divinity for it. We ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... be a downright coxcomb, will ever admit to one woman that another woman has loved him. To his wife—perhaps. But how much Fanny Meyrick cared for me I had never sought to know. After the dismal ending of that moonlight boat-row—I had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... came up with its cause: a score of pikemen, accompanied by several constables, were marching along, and in advance of them was a herd of animals they were driving. These creatures, in number rather more than a hundred, were of various ages, only very few were downright old: the males were downcast and silent. It was the females from whom all the outcry came. In other words, the animals thus driven along at the law's point were ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Marlowe agreed. "Now I was saying that one could always take Manderson's word if he gave it in a definite form. The first time I ever heard him utter a downright lie was on the night he died; and hearing it, I believe, saved me from being ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... in California," she said, when Elizabeth would have dissuaded her from leaving home. "I tell you, Grant would not wish it. I am not married and obliged to shut myself up and play proper like you. It's downright cruel of you wanting me to stay here. I'm half dead with grieving already. The house isn't like home without Grant. At any rate, I'm going; you are ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... it is, a downright shame," cried a woman's voice angrily, "and it's just like you, Jim Adams, to put upon a poor woman so. As if I had not enough trouble with one child, and you want to bring your sister's brat here. I never heard of ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... "I must own that, for downright brutal and bloody ferocity, the wars in Ireland rival those of ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... in admitting every accusation which he could bring against himself, in recalling the light irony with which Winifred Anstice had witnessed his blunders, and the direct, downright anger with which she had dealt out her judgments there at the Point. Only one drop of comfort could Flint extract from the memory of that interview, and he smiled cynically as he remembered the warmth which marked her description of her friend, the ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... happened to come across him. 'Don't revile,' are the first words that come from Pliable's lips, and they are not unpromising words. Pliable is hurt with Obstinate's coarse abuse of the Christian life, till he is downright ashamed to be seen in his company. Pliable, at least, is a gentleman compared with Obstinate, and his gentlemanly feelings and his good manners make him at once take sides with Christian. Obstinate's foul tongue has almost ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... far their vitality was due to their partial or complete truth. To write such a history would perhaps require an impartiality which few people possess and which I do not venture to claim. I have my own opinions for which other people may account by prejudice, assumption, or downright incapacity. I am quite aware that I shall be implicitly criticising myself in criticising others. All that I can profess is that by taking the questions in this order, I shall hope to fix attention upon ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... trifling mauvaise humeur, Papa may worry o'er his own affairs, Or it, perchance, may be a downright "fumer," And judging from the countenance he wears He may be vexed with sundry business cares, A something he would not communicate, In which the happy household never shares, It is not wise it should, at any rate; At least till matters have ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
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